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4 



EVOLUTION 

AND THE 
NEED OF ATONEMENT 



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EVOLUTION 

AND THE 
NEED OF ATONEMENT 



BY 

STEWART A. McDOWALL, M.A. 

TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 
ASSISTANT MASTER AT WINCHESTER COLLEGE 



Cambridge : 

at the University Press 

1914 






First Edition, October 1912 
Second Edit ion, January 1914 



LC Control Number 




tmp96 027694 



<-v 






INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

BY 

The Right Reverend Bishop Ryle, 
Dean of Westminster. 

My friend, Mr McDowall, has allowed me the 
privilege of seeing this remarkable little book in MS. 
I have read it through carefully, and, I may add, with 
the greatest interest. 

I cannot help thinking that his treatment of Evo- 
lutionary Science will be to many readers strikingly 
original and suggestive ; while the theory, which he 
advances in connection with his general scheme of 
thought, upon the Origin and Nature of Sin, and upon 
the subject of the Atonement, is, I am sure, entitled to 
the thoughtful consideration of the theologian, as well 
as of the scientist. 

The fact that he has arrived independently at some 
of the conclusions which have become better known 
through the philosophical writings of M. Bergson, only 
adds to the interest attaching to Mr McDowall's study. 

I am glad to call attention to a work, which it 
seems to me is of real value on religious philosophy, by 
a promising writer. 

Herbert E. Ryle, 
Bishop. 

The Deanery, Westminster, 
June Sth, 1912. 



PREFACE 

IN writing this book I have only considered one 
aspect of the Atonement. Even so, I am conscious 
how incomplete, how rough and ill-composed, it will 
appear. It was thought out and written in the odd 
hours of a busy life, often with long intervals, and 
I fear it bears marked traces of this genesis. But 
it will be justified if in any way the thought outlined 
is of use to a few who, trusting in Jesus Christ, with 
a faith born of experience, yet feel deeply the difficulty 
of aligning the central tenet of the Christian Faith 
with their rational conviction that the evolution 
of animal life has always been from the imperfect 
towards the perfect, and not vice versa ; who find it 
hard to face the question : — If sin is but inherited 
imperfection, how can we believe that man was ever 
wholly alienated from God because of sin ? 

The Atonement must always be beyond the under- 
standing of finite minds. Any standpoint from which 
it is regarded may be, for the time and people, right 
and true ; but we must never forget that the stand- 
point changes. 

The consideration of the Atonement from the stand- 
point of an Absolute Ethic, and above all from that of 
Personality, has given, one might almost say, a new 
revelation. And so too, I believe, will a thorough 
examination from the standpoint of Evolution. If 



viii Preface 

what I have written can serve in any degree as the 
Prolegomena to such studies I shall have achieved the 
utmost I have dared to hope. 

It will be observed that much use has been made of 
the great and suggestive work of M. Bergson in the 
region of the Philosophy of Evolution. Yet much that 
appears to be plagiarism is really parallelism. The 
substance of Chapter I was written in the summer of 
1908, and published in The Interpreter for July 1910 
under the title, " The Biological Argument for Theism." 
Much of the argument of this chapter, and especially 
the conclusions that a " divine unrest " must underlie 
the evolutionary process, and that the creature is 
always striving to attain greater freedom, while itself 
creating fresh conditions for itself and others, is almost 
identical with that developed in U Evolution Criatrice. 
These conclusions were, however, arrived at quite in- 
dependently : I knew nothing of M. Bergsons work till 
some time after this article was published, and the out- 
line of the rest of the book roughly jotted down. But 
those who know M. Bergson's writings will realise what 
an enormous stimulus they gave to my rather inchoate 
thought, and how great a debt I owe to him in their 
final shaping. Mine was the rough, almost grotesque 
sketch of the untrained hand : his the strong, sure 
work of the master. It seemed worth while to refer 
to this, simply because two people, faced with the same 
problem at about the same time, reached the same 



Preface ix 

conclusions in several matters. Certainly, to find that 
another had travelled the same road, gave to myself 
great encouragement to go forward in my further 
journeyings. 

Acknowledgement is due to the Rev. Hewlett 
Johnson, editor of The Interpreter, for his kindness 
in allowing me to make use of my article on " The 
Biological Argument for Theism." As I have already 
stated, this article forms the basis of Chapter I. 

Finally, I would say that whatever of good may 
be found in this book has root in the influence of 
three people. 

To my cousin, Margaret Benson, who taught me to 
think, and to care to think, my debt is lifelong. 

To the teaching and guidance of my friend, Canon 
V. F. Storr, I am indebted for much of such knowledge 
of philosophy and theology as I possess : to his com- 
panionship and encouragement I owe even more. 

To the advice and critical judgment of my wife, 
with wiiom every chapter has been read and re-read, 
the elimination of many obscurities is due. Without her 
constant help the errors of omission and commission 
would have been far more numerous than they now are. 

To these three I dedicate this book. 

S. A. McD. 

WlNTON, 

August 1912. 



a 5 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

THE favourable judgment which has been passed 
upon the first edition of this book emboldens me 
to believe that it has been, and may still be, useful to 
some who are oppressed more with the difficulties of 
their faith than with doubts as to its basis in reality. 
To such it is addressed ; not as an apologetic, but as 
a restatement of certain fundamental doctrines of 
Christianity from that point of view which the spirit 
of the age forces upon us ; not as a full and methodical 
treatise, but as a chain of reasoning which may be 
used to bind together further thoughts which are hinted 
at and suggested rather than elaborated. For each 
man must face his own problems himself ; and the 
problems of no two men are quite alike. 

Such criticisms as have been levelled at the book 
point rather to sins of omission than of commission ; 
but in many instances the omissions were intentional, 
fuller treatment being foreign to the scheme I had in 
mind. Several of the suggestions that have been made 
to me, both by Reviewers, and by private correspon- 
dents, often personally unknown to me, have proved 
helpful and stimulating. To those who tendered them 
I offer my sincere thanks. I am particularly grateful 



Preface to the Second Edition xi 

to those Reviewers through whom I have been led to 
study Dr Denney's books. Though Chapter v was 
never meant to be more than a bare outline, the 
omission of any mention of Dr Denney's work was a 
grave mistake, which I have partly remedied in the 
present edition. 

Criticism has been made of the absence of any 
analysis of the New Testament doctrine in regard to 
the Atonement. But this analysis has already been 
made by many far abler and more competent for the 
task than the present writer, and it would be sheer 
presumption on his part to attempt to add to what has 
been said by them. The task I set before myself was 
a far lighter one ; namely, to analyse very briefly the 
conclusions of scholars, and to use their results, them- 
selves based on the writings of the Apostles and 
Evangelists, to supply a clue to the relation between 
Sin and Atonement. 

It may perhaps be well to mention that the state- 
ment, objected to as " unpardonably incorrect" by 
one Reviewer, that in the systems of certain of the 
Reformers " man's acceptance of Christ is based on 
terror," occurs in a passage which is quoted, though 
not verbatim, from Oxenham's Catholic Doctrine of the 
Atonement, p. 232 (3rd edition). The view is therefore 
not my own, though I believe it to be substantially true, 
as indeed McLeod Campbell affirms. 

I trust that I have profited by certain criticisms of 



xii Preface to the Second Edition 

minor points. In several cases I have tried to remove 
the obscurities and overstatements against which they 
were directed. 

With one exception, no considerable changes have 
been made in this edition ; but a small amount of 
fresh matter has been added where it seemed that the 
text was open to misconception or required ampli- 
fication ; and a considerable section has been added 
to the discussion of original sin. As formulated in 
the first edition, the conclusion reached in regard to 
this matter was open to serious objection, though the 
fact, and the reason for it, has escaped the notice of 
critics. I trust, however, that the fuller consideration 
of the matter given on pp. 144-151 will meet a diffi- 
culty which must appeal with special force to the mind 
of a biologist. 

The problem of pain has also received somewhat 
fuller treatment. 

No attempt has been made to supplement the book 
by a more detailed discussion of the bearing of the 
theory on personality and on the spiritual life. It 
seemed better to reserve this in the hope of offering 
some suggestions on these matters at a future date. 

The one considerable change alluded to above is 
in regard to the treatment of the Atonement itself. 
The subject-matter of the book was originally intended 
to be covered by the title " Evolution and the need of 
Atonement." But reflection and criticism have shown 



Preface to the Second Edition xiii 

that a somewhat fuller consideration of the theory of 
the Atonement was needed, in order to give greater 
completeness and continuity. The link between the 
earlier and later parts of the book was too slender. 
Therefore, with much hesitation and unwillingness, 
I have inserted in the last chapter a brief outline of the 
thought which seems to me to strengthen that link. 
I trust, however, that it will be clearly understood that 
no attempt has been made to give a theory of the 
Atonement that is complete in itself, even so far as 
completeness is possible to our limited understanding. 
Only that aspect which is brought into prominence 
by the theory of sin elaborated in the earlier chapters 
has been treated, and that in the briefest manner 
possible. 

S. A. McD. 



WlNTON, 

November 1913 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introductory note by Bishop Ryle .... v 

Preface vii 

Preface to Second Edition x 

Introduction xix 

CHAPTER I 

Environment and Evolution 

Essential factors in evolution : 

(i) Variation ......... 1 

(n) Heredity 3 

(m) Overcrowding ........ 3 

(iv) Impossibility of retrogression ..... 4 

Design and teleology 5 

Evolution as adaptation. Definition of environment 6 

Environment and equilibrium .... 7 

Main and side lines of evolution .... 8 

The environment- sum ...... 9 

Effect of changed environment on an organism . 11 

Limitation and progress 12 

Evolution as progressive adaptation. Discontinuous 

variations 13 

The threshold of spiritual phenomena . . . 15 
The necessity of postulating a factor in the total 

environment, of the nature of spirit . . . 16 

The biological argument for Theism . . . 19 

Teleology and chance 20 

Note on Chapter I 21 



Contents xv 

CHAPTER II 

The Basis of Evolution 

page 

Questions to be considered 23 

(i) The nature of evolution. 

Huxley's indictment of the world-process as anti- 
moral 24 

Solution of the Buddhists and Stoics : renunciation . 25 
Solution of Huxley : to side with ethical process . 25 
Solution of Nietzsche : to side with cosmic process 26 
Fundamental fallacy in Huxley's antithesis between 

ethical and cosmic processes .... 27 

The two opposing principles are the degradation of 
energy, or Katabolism — the principle ruling the 
inanimate world ....... 29 

And Anabolism — the principle whereby the living 

organism stores up energy 30 

Anabolism is victorious in the race, though Kata- 
bolism triumphs over the individual ... 32 
(n) The cause of evolution. 

The vital impulse ....... 34 

(m) Consciousness and self -consciousness. 

The struggle of consciousness towards expression . 36 
Continuity between adaptation and the highest exam- 
ples of mechanical skill in man .... 38 

Consciousness and the vital impulse ... 38 

Summary 40 

CHAPTER III 
Evolution and Freedom 

(iv) Creation wrought by the creature in its evolution. 

(v) Freewill as a product of progress. 

Freedom in response to a determinate environment . 42 
Creative evolution 46 



xvi Contents 



PAOl 



Continuity of unconscious adaptation and conscious 

tool- making more fully considered ... 48 

Predicable and non-predicable factors ... 52 

Review of argument ...... 54 

The demands of personality 66 

(vi) Sin in relation to the evolutionary process. 

The death of the individual and of the race contrasted 58 
Man alone has the power of voluntary progress : is 

sin failure to exercise this power ? 61 

CHAPTER IV 

The Origin Of Sin 

The theory of Tennant 88 

Objections to this theory 64 

Progress through ideals . . . . . <>7 

Primitive belief 71 

Continuity in the cosmos : in this lies the answer to 

some objections to Tennant's theory . . . 73 
Sin as misuse of experience, cheeking the growth of 

spiritual freedom ....... 74 

Personality and im mortality 79 

Summary ......... 80 



CHAPTER V 

A Summary of Christian Thought on the Atonement 

The biological survey 83 

Irenaeus and Origen 86 

Erigena 88 

The Schoolmen : Anselm, Aquinas, Duns Scotus . 89 
The Reformers : Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, Beza, 

Zwingli 91 

The Moderns : Wilberforce 94 



Contents xvii 

PAGE 

Dale 95 

McLeod Campbell, Essayists 97 

Denney ......... 98 

Bethune-Baker 101 

Moberly 103 

Lofthouse 106 

Askwith Ill 

The theological survey . . . . . .112 

Ethical and personal bases for a theory of the Atone- 
ment 114 

Hitchcock 116 

CHAPTER VI 

The Consequences of Sin 

True evidence of teleology is found in the emergence 

of freedom in living matter . . . . .120 

The race and the individual 124 

The consequences of sin 129 

Summary 133 

Consciousness and the vital impulse . . .134 

Fundamentals of Atonement 138 

The effect of individual sin on the race . . .140 
Suggestions towards a biological theory of Original 

Sin "... 143 

Summary 150 

CHAPTEB VII 

The Atonement 

Continuity demanded 152 

God must free man from the consequences of his sin ; 

man must set his will in line with the will of God 155 
The solution must be sought in the spiritual plane . 155 
Pain the condition of progress . . . .158 



xviii Contents 

PAGE 

Creation as a Kenosis of the Godhead . . ,163 

The Incarnation and Passion as a second Kenosis. 165 
Union with God through union with the Perfect 

Manhood of Christ, transcending time. . . 168 

Pluralism resolved in union 172 

Atonement for the Race 174 

The fundamental altruism of the world-process 175 

The perpetual renewal of the Atonement . . 177 

Conclusion 181 



INTRODUCTION 

As the title indicates, the main object of this book 
is not to offer a new theory of the Atonement. Rather 
it is intended to show that when the origin and history 
of man are studied from the scientific, and especially 
the biological side, the spiritual life, its partial failure, 
and the need for Atonement, far from receding into 
vagueness and unreality, are thrown into strong relief. 

Thus, the biological argument for the existence of 
God ; the underlying essential principle of the evolu- 
tionary process; the aim of the whole process — in- 
creasing freedom ; the beginnings and biological nature 
of sin ; the individual, self-conscious person ; the theo- 
logical nature of sin ; the need of atonement, from the 
standpoints of theology and of biology ; are developed 
as a coherent, logical sequence. I believe that such 
a method of treatment is not merely permissible ; it 
has great reality and cogency, and, fully developed, 
would prove a valuable contribution to thought. In 
the last chapter certain points in regard to the Atone- 
ment are examined in the light of what has gone 



xx Introduction 

before, and various suggestions are put forward in 
regard to their meaning and importance. Thus the 
book falls into two parts. 

The first, and by far the longer, forms, I venture 
to believe, a logical chain of reasoning, leading to a 
definite conclusion — that when man's story is viewed in 
its biological aspect, the necessity of the Atonement 
emerges very clearly. 

The second is far more tentative and suggestive. 
In it certain aspects of the Atonement wrought by 
Jesus Christ are considered briefly in relation to the 
argument developed in the previous chapters. 

Two other points demand mention. 

No attempt has been made to deal with the philo- 
sophical problem of Freewill. The existence of freedom 
in man has been assumed ; indeed the increase of free- 
dom is argued to be the raison </'<tre of physical 
evolution. The nature of Personality also has not 
received any adequate consideration. Many works 
are devoted to the consideration of these matters ; 
the discussion of them would have been impossible 
within our limits, besides being hardly pertinent. 



CHAPTER I 

ENVIRONMENT AND EVOLUTION 

The biological conception we call evolution rests 
on the assumption, whose truth is attested by a vast 
amount of evidence, that organisms vary, and that 
those variations which tend towards the more perfect 
adaptation of the organism to its environment have 
the best chance of being perpetuated. 

The four essential factors are variability, heredity, 
overcrowding, tending to the elimination of those or- 
ganisms less suited than their kin to cope with their 
environment, and lastly the apparent impossibility of 
retrogression. That very many other factors have played 
a more or less important part in the evolution of the 
animal and plant world as we see it to-day is true. 
But for our present purpose we may confine ourselves 
to those we have mentioned. 

Before proceeding further, it is necessary that we 
should examine carefully what exact meaning we pro- 
pose to assign to the factors we have selected. 

(I) Apart from any philosophical exactitude, it is 
quite clear to all of us that no two living organisms, 
plant or animal, are quite alike. We may isolate a 

m. 1 



2 Variation 

small group, all sprung from the same parents, and we 
shall still find differences ; not perhaps any very striking 
ones, though this is by no means necessarily so, but at 
any rate peculiarities quite marked enough for us to 
differentiate individual from individual. We may go 
still further and examine individuals all produced at 
one birth, and still we find differences. 

Some of these differences will no doubt be due to 
the diverse conditions under which the individuals live : 
we may plant two nasturtium seeds one against a north 
wall, the other against a south wall, and we shall find 
that the first becomes " leggy," climbs higher and 
higher seeking the sun, and produces few flowers and 
little fruit until it reaches the top of the wall, while 
the other develops flowers and fruit all up its stem ; 
it is not with such differences we are concerned. The 
cause of them is obvious and superficial ; they are 
acquired characters, and we shall leave them out 
of consideration at present. But the others are far 
more deep-seated ; there seems to be no reason for 
them, and they have properties which differentiate 
them enormously in degree, if not fundamentally 
in kind, from acquired characters. Their cause is 
biologically unexplained, from the nature of the case 
biologically inexplicable ; " it is a datum in the world 
of life 1 ." They are due to something in the organism 
itself, and the property of producing them is inherent 

1 Cf. J. Arthur Thomson, Heredity, p. 100. 



Heredity and the Struggle for Existence 3 

in all living matter. The direction of the variation 
of a group of individuals may possibly be determined 
to some extent by the surroundings of the parent 
organism, but there is certainly no immediate con- 
nection between the characters acquired by the parent 
and the variations appearing in the offspring. Of course 
as a rule 1 they are slight, and would appear trivial to 
a superficial observer, but none the less they lie at the 
bottom of all evolution. 

(II) Now the characteristic property of these deep- 
seated differences, or variations properly so called, is 
that they are hereditarily transmissible. It is in this 
that they differ absolutely in kind, or at any rate so 
enormously in degree that for our purposes we may 
assume that the difference is in kind, from the acquired 
differences we have mentioned. It is not necessary or 
desirable to discuss the details of their transmission 
here : we are not concerned with biological contro- 
versies ; the fact that on the whole these true varia- 
tions tend to be transmitted to the offspring if both 
parents possess them, often if they are possessed only 
by one parent, is all that concerns us. 

(III) But the total number of organisms, whether 
animal or plant, that comes into the world is incon- 
ceivably greater than the number that can eventually 
survive. A single turbot lays about nine million eggs 
a year. A white-ant queen lays 80,000 eggs a day. 

1 Not always, as will be explained later. 

1—2 



4 Natural Selection — Retrogression 

And so there comes about a struggle for existence 
leading to the elimination of the less fit. On the 
whole those that survive will be those that are in some 
way better fitted to cope with their environment than 
their fellows. 

(IV) But suppose that some unforeseen change of 
conditions makes the line of development entered upon 
by an organism unsuitable ? Could not an exactly 
opposite process take place, and the organism pass 
through the stages it has already traversed, in the re- 
verse order, changing from the more complex to the 
simpler, till it reaches its starting point once again and 
is free to evolve in a more suitable manner? This would 
only be a kind of inverse selection, the less unfit organ- 
isms having the better chance of survival, and at fir^t 
sight the process seems natural enough. But it does 
not occur, to any appreciable extent at all events 1 ; 
more, it could not occur except sporadically for two 
reasons, as we shall see later. This is what we mean by 
the impossibility of retrogression, of a reversal of the 
order of evolution. It must not be confused with 
the familiar phenomenon of the atrophic degeneration 
of organs not used, an elementary example of which 

1 The question of the existence of what are called " retrogro- 
mutations " is not taken into consideration here. Biologists will 
realise that it does not affect the broad aspect of evolution, and so is 
of no importance to the matter in hand. For details of retrogressive 
mutations see Lock, Recent progress in the Study of Variation, 
Heredity, and Evolution, and The Mutation Theory, by H. de Vries. 



The Argument from Design 5 

is seen in the wings of the farm-yard duck, and an 
advanced stage of the same in the kiwi and kakapo of 
New Zealand and in the ostrich. Here the gradual 
reduction to vestiges is due simply to the combined 
action of lack of use leading to atrophy, and of inter- 
crossing with absence of selection — what Weismann 
called panmixia. 

Thus the earliest form of the Design-Argument, 
which found evidence of direct mechanical contrivance 
in every form of adaptation to the conditions of 
existence, has passed away with the growth of an 
understanding that such adaptation must necessarily 
be found on every side in a world where the only 
chance of survival lay in responsiveness to environ- 
mental conditions. 

It has been superseded by the doctrine that the 

existence of progress implies an end ; that the very idea 

of development is purposive, teleological, or it would 

be indeterminate, tending to no goal 1 ; that design, in 

the sense of purpose, is to be seen in each stage of 

development, in that each stage is a step towards an 

end ; that the value of the stages is to be sought, at all 

events mainly, in their final interpretation. But if one 

may be permitted to use that very dangerous weapon, 

1 In this chapter the word indeterminate is used in the sense of 
vague, purposeless, almost chaotic. It is necessary to note this, as in 
a later chapter it is used, following M. Bergson, in the sense of free, 
not fore-ordained. 



6 Adaptation 

William Occam's razor, does not this doctrine contain 
something " praeter necessitatem " ! Would a develop- 
ment not externally directed necessarily be indeter- 
minate ? And if not, shall we not have to look yet 
deeper before we can postulate Design even in the 
modified form of teleology ? 

Evolution is adaptation to environment. Why then 
should it be progressive and continuous ? Why should 
not each set of organisms reach a dead-level of com- 
parative perfection ? The question could only arise 
from an imperfect conception of the term environment. 
Let us examine what we mean by it. 

In its broadest sense the word connotes all factors 
which can influence the organism., however remotely 
only in its present stage, but in all future stages. 

Thus it becomes clear that each adaptation which 
brings, let us say, a more perfect method of locomotion 
must bring the organism into relation with a whole 
series of fresh conditions, still part of its environment, 
which will in their turn require thousands of genera- 
tions before perfect adaptation is reached. But we must 
go further than this. By its own changes the organism 
creates fresh conditions for itself and for other or- 
ganisms. One can conceive that the evolution of the 
Greenland whale introduced very considerable additions 
into the environment of the jelly-fish and pteropods 
it feeds upon. Thus what one may call the environ- 
ment-sum is never completed while development is 



Equilibrium 7 

progressing. Each organism creates as it evolves, 
creates a new environment for itself and for others. 
To this also we shall have to return later. 

Evolution now presents itself to us under a some- 
what different aspect as the continual effort of the 
organism to reach equilibrium with its environment. 

If it be true however that each minutest adapta- 
tion brings the organism into relation, to a greater or 
less degree, with a fresh series of environmental con- 
ditions, it must take ages for any organism to reach 
a complete equilibrium with a complex environment, 
and if the environment were itself increased, as we 
have seen is the case, complete equilibrium would 
never be reached ; the organism would always be ap- 
proaching perfection, but would never attain it. The 
curve of progress would be asymptotic. But positions 
of stable equilibrium might be reached without this 
complete equilibrium, i.e. without complete adaptation 
to the whole environment, for an equilibrium-position 
will be reached when further adaptation along the 
particular line of development would be disadvantageous. 
And these equilibrium-positions need not necessarily 
mean identity of organisation in the various organisms. 
For suppose two variations to occur at one given stage, 
neither being disadvantageous to the organism at that 
stage. Obviously each brings its possessor into fresh 
relations which will differ to a greater or less extent. 
This will necessarily lead to two divergent lines of 



8 Main and Side Lines 

development — lines diverging without any possibility of 
ultimate approach, since approach would imply a less 
perfect adaptation to the then environment of the organ- 
ism for the sake of an ultimate adaptation to a fuller 
and somewhat different environment ; would imply 
retrogression ; would imply a process involving a strange 
teleology indeed ! 

This explains the existence of side-lines of develop- 
ment, and involves too the possibility at least of a 
direct line of progress towards an absolutely complete 
adaptation, even if that can never be quite achieved. 
We must not forget however that each stage of de- 
velopment imposes fresh limitations, as well as supplies 
a fresh horizon for the organism. Thus for a given 
organism at a given moment there is a definite total 
environment, or set of conditions which can then, or 
may possibly in the future be able to, affect it ; but 
each stage of progress, while introducing fresh con- 
ditions in the present, also reduces, perhaps to a very 
great extent, the number of possible conditions before 
included in its total environment which might affect it 
in the future, for there is no going back. For instance, 
when certain fishes began to take more and more to 
the land, they were gradually exempted from all the 
conditions of the sea-life which before had been a large 
part of their total environment 1 . To put it simply, 

1 What can we say, then, of a land-organism which once more 
betakes itself to the sea ? Let us take for example the whale. It can 



in Evolution 9 

each stage of development circumscribes the future 
possibilities. It is clear from what has been said that 
the variation possibilities for an organism at any given 
stage are limited, and at each stage fresh limitations 
are imposed ; so that although its actual environment, 
or acting-environment, ma) 7 be increasing, yet its total 
environment, or the sum of all the conditions that can 
act on it now or in the future and make it evolve 
further, is becoming less. True, each organism creates 
as it varies and so makes for itself and for other 
organisms fresh conditions ; but as time goes on more 
and more organisms being off the main line of evolution 
reach, or at least approach, an equilibrium position, 
and consequently the increase of these secondarily- 
created environmental conditions becomes progressively 
less. 

Thus for a given organism at a given moment there 
may be a definite total environment, differing from the 
total environment of another organism, probably of 
every other organism, while yet one may speak of an 
ultimate " environment-sum " that comprehends all 
conditions. This " environment-sum" must include the 
" total environments " of all organisms, or their lowest 

never return to true gills and fins of the same nature as, or as zoologists 
would say, homologous with, those of a fish. At best it can but develop 
similar or analogous organs, and it will be so far behind the fish in 
adaptation to marine conditions that its efforts may be regarded as 
hopeless : it has tried to turn back, failed, and is eventually added to 
nature's flotsam and jetsam, being incapable of further progress. 



10 The Environment-Sum 

common multiple one might almost say, but it may 
include another term whose magnitude cannot be deter- 
mined, and which cannot be recognised since it has 
not yet begun to influence any organism. And, as we 
shall see, this is of very great importance. Expressed 
algebraically, S € ■ a e f &,, 4 c, , + . . . + x e . But we have 
neglected to take into account that environment which 
is constantly being created by each organism. And 
here we are landed in a difficulty. Up to a certain 
point what is created is a function of the total environ- 
ment of the organism, and we could complete our 
formula by adding J (a,) +f (fc<>), etc. But there are 
functions not only unknown but unknowable, and 
here in reality our argument breaks down. This 
break is of the utmost importance, in its bearing on 
the matters we have to consider in a later chapter, 
for in it lies freedom. For the present however we 
may disregard it, and assume that our formula is 
complete. 

On the one hand, then, we can imagine numerous 
positions of equilibrium under a given series of con- 
ditions, such as that, for example, we call marine. 
Yet, on the other hand, we can form a definite concept 
of what we mean by marine life, we can form the in- 
clusive concept, as well as appreciate the included 
concepts, of the various equilibrium conditions of 
different marine forms. So also we can conceive of 
an intelligence whose concept of the environment-sum 



Effect of Fresh Conditions 1 1 

in the cosmos is, within the limits indicated, com- 
plete. 

We may assume, for the sake of argument, that 
some form of marine life was the most primitive. Now 
when a marine organism begins to adapt itself in the 
direction of a littoral life, we have obviously a suc- 
cession of environmental changes so marked as to 
produce a very rapid adaptation, for even the smallest 
change will be markedly favourable or unfavourable. 
The change to a life at first between tide-marks, then 
wholly on shore, must introduce such a vast series of new 
factors that an incredibly huge number of experimental 
variations must occur ; some useless, some committing 
to one line of advance, some to another. Again, equally 
obviously, organisms that had gone very far in adapting 
themselves to certain conditions of marine existence, 
and so had committed themselves to a particular line 
of development, could not go very far under the new 
conditions, for retrogression is impossible ; the majority 
would fail completely, some few would get on in a 
lowly way, their equilibrium-position being reached in 
a comparatively short time and comprising relations 
with a comparatively small range of environmental 
conditions. An example of this may be found in the 
littoral and land Crustacea — the wood-louse and his 
sea-side cousin Idotea, for example. The creatures that 
succeeded best would be those who adapted themselves 
completely to the simpler conditions of the sea, yet had 



12 Progress and Teleology 

not committed themselves by over-specialisation, but 
were ready to respond to the new stimuli of the shore 
and the land. And in just the same way the land 
organisms which early reached their equilibrium- 
position — i.e. the position involving approximately 
complete adaptation to a small number of conditions — 
would again be incapable of what we call " progress " 
into a higher and more complex development. Thus 
we see that the organism 1 which becomes "highest 2 " 
is that which never reaches a stable position, but is 
always ready to respond to the fresh higher environ- 
ment conditioned by its last progressive variation. 

But, as we have said, the direction of evolution is 
enormously limited by the new environment. Thus in 
our example the main limitations lie in the direction 
of the methods of locomotion and of respiration. 

Now on these lines of argument it appears that we 
have no need to postulate any direct teleological signi- 
ficance in the idea of progress : progress becomes 
simply adaptation to an automatically-increasing num- 
ber of conditions. But it is noteworthy that it implies 
a " divine discontent," an unconscious rejection of any 
equilibrium-position, an unconscious recognition of the 
principle that equilibrium means failure, death in the 

1 Throughout this essay the word organism for the sake of brevity 
is used in two senses, firstly in its ordinary connotation, and secondly 
to denote a series originating in an individual organism. 

2 " Higher " environment of course can only he judged to be such 
by observation of its influence on the organism. 



Progress the Condition of Success 13 

long run, when some unforeseen factor, due perhaps to 
other organisms that have not remained stationary, 
comes in, and the equilibrium is upset, and there is no 
power of regression. This last point is of great im- 
portance and we shall have much to say of it later 1 . 

It now becomes clear that our idea of evolution 
as the continual effort of the organism to reach equi- 
librium with its environment is inadequate, or at least 
presents only one side of the picture, for equilibrium 
means failure. Rather, the organism is always en- 
deavouring to respond to its environment, but in doing 
so it may open up fresh possibilities for itself. If it 
fails to do this it is doomed. 

Thus far we have been following the lead of Bio- 
logical Science ; the idea of sudden variation-activity 
under new conditions is now universally conceded 2 . 
But in such cases, where there is a marked change of 
environment, not only is there a sudden outburst of 
variation-activity, but the individual variations are far 
greater, so much so that some writers use a special 
name, mutations, to designate them. The stock 

1 Cf. Bergson's discussion of the " splitting up of tendencies." 
Creative Evolution, pp. 124, 125. The correspondence between his 
elementary tendencies and the non- equilibrated positions we have 
been considering is very close. 

2 Cf. H. de Vries, The Mutation Theory, and Art. Variation in 
Darwin and Modern Science. An interesting forecast of de Vries' work 
from the theoretical side is to be found in the Romanes Lecture for 
1894 delivered by A. Weismann, in the discussion of what he terms 
intra-selection. 



14 Variation-activity : Mutations 

example, because the earliest investigated, is that of 
Oenothera Lamarckiana, the Evening Primrose, which 
when grown in a rich soil was found by de Vries to be 
in a state of extraordinary instability, tending even in 
its natural conditions to vary between very wide limits ; 
but many others are known, especially among insects 
and molluscs. Sometimes these mutations are due to 
environmental change, that is to external conditions, 
but often no reason for them can be assigned : they 
seem to be due to some internal impulse. Numerous 
sporadic examples of such cases were noticed, and their 
importance recognised, more than twenty years ago 
under the name of " discontinuous variations " by 
Bateson 1 , who assigns to them a prime importance in 
the story of evolution. 

Now let us imagine a " receptive " organism, that 
is, an organism capable of large responsiveness to en- 
vironmental change, an organism on the main line of 
evolution, suddenly drifting to a new threshold, and 
now and again left stranded on a shore where new 
conditions, not of sun and air, but of supersensual 
influences act on it. 

Is it pressing an analogy too far to suppose that 
a whole set of variations again limited in direction will 
be initiated, leading to a higher degree of consciousness 
and at last to self-consciousness ? This last, giving the 
power of greatest response to the " new " conditions, 

1 Materials for the Study of Variation. 



The Threshold of Spiritual Phenomena 15 

will lead up to the ethical and spiritual phenomena of 
self-conscious organisms. Such a sudden change — the 
appearance of phenomena different in kind from all 
that preceded them — would be nothing more than a 
marked case of " discontinuous variation." 

Is it not possible, at the very least, that the reason 
for the appearance of moral and spiritual phenomena, 
for their sporadic and imperfect appearance in certain 
lower groups of animals whose colonial or gregarious 
habit has favoured their manifestation to a certain 
degree, their omnipresence and importance in the 
highest creatures, men, may be that the organism has 
developed to a stage when a fresh environment, more 
different in kind than even water and land conditions, 
is able to influence it ? It must of course be clearly 
understood that this environment has not suddenly come 
into being ; what has happened is simply that a fresh 
factor of the total environment has become operative 
owing to the organism having reached a stage where 
it can be influenced by that factor. 

Looking at the matter from the other side, we must 
all admit that however we propose to account for them, 
moral and spiritual phenomena are characteristic of 
men, and in a minor degree of some animals ; some of 
these are distinctly antagonistic to the chacun-pour-soi 
of material evolution ; and yet unquestionably there is 
spiritual development and progress 1 . 
1 See note at end of chapter. 



16 The Argument for a 

Does not this fact of spiritual development demand 
a determining environment which must have some 
close relation with it ? Does not an examination of 
the phenomena of evolution lead to the irresistible 
conclusion that there must be some " higher " environ- 
ment to call out spiritual activities ? If so, then 
environment is more complex than at first appeared, 
there is an x-factor in the sum ; for, as has been 
said, it is impossible to conceive of development 
except in relation to environment, and unquestionably 
we have spiritual development. 

Now just as the environment that calls out gills 
as a response must be a gill-demanding environment, 
so that which calls out spiritual phenomena as a re- 
sponse must be of a nature that demands spirituality. 
In other words a given environment evokes a suitable 
response, and conversely we can argue back from the 
response to the environment. 

We are not strictly justified in saying that the 
environment is spirit, any more than we are justified 
in saying that the environment of our illustration is 
the essence of gill ; but Biology will support us to the 
extent we have stated, and neither common sense nor 
Philosophy will offer much objection if we conclude 
that that which evokes a spiritual response is of the 
nature of spirit, essentially spiritual. Philosophy after 
all has used the argument before, and justified its use. 
And of course what we have said of the evolution of 



Spiritual Environment 17 

spiritual phenomena is equally, and perhaps more 
demonstrably, true of mental phenomena. 

So, taking biological science for our guide, we are 
led, through what will, I fear, appear to many a mazy 
path, to a belief in one environment which is the 
cause of all development physical and super-physical. 
Starting with the biological canon that development 
except in response to environment is impossible, and 
remembering that a sudden change in environment 
leads to an outburst of intense variation-activity along 
rather definite lines, we have been led to the con- 
clusion that the appearance of spiritual phenomena in 
the animate world implies the existence of a vast 
environment to which spirituality is the suitable 
response. And reason decides that this environment 
can itself be conceived by the mind only in the category 
of the spiritual 1 . 

1 A superficial consideration of the foregoing argument might 
lead to the objection that, granting the truth of our reasoning, it is 
still open to us to deny that a case has been made out for the ex- 
istence of a Divine Environment. Why should not the appearance 
of spirituality be the fitting response to an environment created by 
the living organism, as it approaches the threshold of manhood ? 
The dilemma is thus between a pre-existing divine environment, 
and an environment that is itself the outcome of evolving life. I 
think the true solution will become abundantly clear as the thesis of 
this book develops itself. Briefly, the answer is to be found along the 
following lines. Either the spiritual environment is a function of the 
pre-existing environmental factors, corresponding to f(a € ),f(b) e etc. of 
our formula, in which case it is really implicit in the whole, involved 
in it from the beginning ; and this is equivalent to predicating a 



18 The Argument for Theism 

Again, our minds are able to understand or appre- 
hend what is meant by the general term environment : 
we can form a vague idea of the environment-sum as 
a whole, even while we recognise that a full realisation 
of its content must always elude us. If we added 
together the content of the word for every individual 
organism at every stage of development, at best we 
should still be omitting all the terms we included 
under the symbol x in our formula. 

But we can conceive of a transcendent mind which 

spiritual nature in the environment as a whole; or else the 
spiritual environment is one of the impredicable factors due to the 
existence of freedom, the " unknowable factors," in which 
have to assent to the idea that the freedom which lies at the core of 
progress (vide infra, Chapter in) is tending towards spirituality. In 
either case we are driven back on the old philosophic difficulty that 
the existence of mind and spirit demands the prc-cxisteiice of mind 
and spirit in the cosmos. Thus in the second case the impredicable 
factor becomes predicable: if there ifl a Cosmic Mind, the development 
of mind in response to it is inevitable. We find the argument a circle, 
and are driven back to our position that the development of mind 
and spirit demands environmental mind and spirit. rf contain 

spirit, for freedom must be the suitable response to something in the 
cosmos, and the only thing that is free is spirit. The objection Kl 
thus seen to be essentially invalid, introducing a complication that 
is without any ultimate meaning. The only other possible ex- 
planation is that known as epiphenomenalism, the mental and 
spiritual states being regarded merely as by-products of physical 
evolution. Biologically, the idea of reasoned tool-making winch 
involves self -consciousness, itself the basis of volition, of reflection, 
and of spiritual life ( vide infra, Chapter rn) as a by-product of evolution 
is untenable ; metaphysically, the doctrine of epiphenomenalism has 
been so completely exploded that it is unnecessary to deal with it here. 
Reference may be made, for instance, to Taylor's Elements of Meta- 
physics, pp. 318 seqq. 



The Argument for Theism 19 

could understand or apprehend the full content of the 
word, if we omit the conditions which are created by 
the organisms themselves (we must again insist on the 
importance of this reservation for our future discus- 
sion), and it would be of the same nature as our mind, 
though of a transcendent order. But a mind whose 
only function is to understand or apprehend cosmic 
phenomena is, if not unthinkable, at least irrational, 
absurd. But if on the other hand we imagine a 
Transcendent Mind w T hich comprehends, enfolds, in- 
cludes the environment-sum of the whole world — let 
us go further and say, which is the environment-sum 
of the whole cosmos, of worlds seen and unseen — we 
avoid the absurdity, and have at once an Absolute 
continuous in action, the cause of all things, whose 
activity is manifested in all phenomena and which yet 
transcends and includes them. 

We have thus obtained " a graduated series or 
articulated organism, unified and completed by an 
idea which has none higher than itself, which is 
ultimate, which conditions all the others while it is 
conditioned by none 1 ." And what is this but the 
well-known Platonic argument for God ? 

By purely biological reasoning, that is to say, we 
have reached a position from which the most rational, 
logical escape is to postulate a God in whom we live 
and move and have our being. 

1 Flint, Theism, p. 270. 

2—2 



20 Teleology and Chance 

We have seen, too, that teleology is not to be 
sought in the phenomenon of progress, for evolution 
could not be indefinite, indeterminate, since it is but 
an increasingly complete response to surrounding 
conditions, and becomes self-limited at each new step, 
as well as being creative. Continuous adaptation 
give rise to the phenomenon we call progress. Instead 
of reading the series in the light of the end, we have 
to recognise in every stage a value, we have to admit 
each stage as an end in itself. If there is teleology it 
is to be sought in the existence of variation, in the 
existence of a power of progress that is, and not in 
progress itself 1 . With this in our mind, each stage 
of development becomes for us a microcosm, pic- 
turing in little the development of the whole animate 
world. 

At first sight the realm of what we call ehanoe 
may seem to be extended ; but for the biologist chance 
has always played a great part. Now, on the other 
hand, instead of being an isolated inexplicable fact, 
chance is seen as in itself in a sense purposive 2 , since 

1 This corresponds no doubt in some degree with what Bergson 
(U Involution Creatrice) calls the impulse of life, but it includes the 
material basis on which the vital impulse works. 

2 In this connection, and in relation to the following chaj> 

it is instructive to read Lecture IV in James Ward's The Realm of 
Ends, on " The Contingency in the World." 

" Now ' chance,' we are told, 4 is opposed to law in this sense, viz. 
that what happens according to law may be predicted and counted 
on ' : in the same sense the conduct of living beings, i.e. historical 



Spiritual Phenomena inevitable 21 

the appearance of a favourable variation is no longer 
chance at any stage, but the working out of a huge 
sum in Permutations, which is bound to lead to the 
right answer in the end, is bound to result in the 
development of freewill and spirituality. For the 
environment is super-physical as well as physical ; is 
all one. The mystery of the failures remains, but it 
is no greater than before. Spirituality must eventually 
appear under a spiritual environment. The creation 
must eventually work out its own salvation, through 
pain and fear and trembling, and appear at length in 
the likeness of God, the primal Cause. 

Note on Chapter i. The analogy between spiritual and 
physical evolution becomes more striking the more one studies 
the phenomena. Thus, equilibrium-positions occur, indicating the 

events, are opposed to law. Thus what one person might regard as 
due to chance may really be due to the act of another. According to 
the pluralistic Weltanschauung then there are no laws antecedent to 
the active individuals who compose the world, no laws determining 
them, unless we call their own nature a law ; and then indeed the 
world would start with as many laws as there are individuals. Such 
a view of course involves throughout an element of contingency such 
as we find in all personal affairs. Some pluralists, very ill-advisedly 
as I think, have identified this element with pure chance and even 
proposed to elevate it to the place of a guiding principle under the 
title of ' tychism,' — rvxv Kvfiepvg iravra. But every act of a 
conative agent is determined by — what may, in a wide sense, be called 
— a motive, and motivation is incompatible with chance, though in 
the concrete it be not reducible to law " (op. tit. pp. 75, 76). 

In the lower organisms this motive must doubtless, as we shall 
see, be sought in the restless urgings of the vital impulse, as indeed 
Ward implies (op. tit. p. 79). 



22 Mutation in Animals 

highest development possible along side-lines of evolution ; while the 
absence of such positions marks the direct line of progress. Animism, 
for example, finds its highest expression in the Ancestor-worship of 
Japan, the logical outcome of the animistic system called Shinto ; while 
from the direct line of development which led to monotheism we find 
a branch which ends, after a little further progress, in Moham- 
medanism, and another diverging earlier from the main stem, and 
finding its resting-place in Buddhism, in addition to the main line 
which is traceable through Judaism, and which, by universal consent, 
finds its fullest expression as yet in progressive Christianity. Again. 
the existence of what may be termed dial ontinuous variation in the 
mental and spiritual fphere M well as the natural, when a race makes 
great advances under new influences, is well known. .Many eases 
might be cited, M, for instance, Judaea during the Captivity, and 
again at the coming of Christ, Europe during the Renaissance, Japan 
and China at the present day. On the other hand, the fatal etlects 

of national and religions stagnation, and of over-specialisation a! 

wrong lines of development, are only too well known. Of these we 
shall have much to say later. 

Objection may be raised to part of the argument of tin 
on the ground that too much stress has been laid on the influence of 
environment in producing mutations. It is true that de Yries worked 
mainly on plant-variation, and that animals do not appeal to he as 
sensitive to environmental change as plants ; hut discontinue 
variations and unstable species ate well known among animals also, 
and cases occur in organisms, like Purjmru, which live on the 
threshold of a new environment. And it may legitimately he argued 
that since animals move, prey, and are preyed upon, these are the 
conditions which, being changed, arc likely to lead to discontinuous 
variation ; and these conditions do not lend themselves to experi- 
mental application. Moreover it seems likely that, under the influence 
of such stimuli, progress would be more rapid, and equilibrium would 
be reached more quickly and completely than in the case of plan 
Hence we should not expect to find such marked cases of variability 
in essential features, under the circumstances. But the analogy of 
plants leads us to expect that what is an important factor in their 
evolution will not be wholly inoperative in the evolution of animals ; 
and if it occurs at all, as it does, it will be most marked when the 
environment is changing most rapidly. 



CHAPTER II 

THE BASIS OF EVOLUTION 

It becomes necessary next to look more deeply into 
certain questions raised in the last chapter, in order 
that we may see their relation to one another and 
realise clearly that we have to do with continuity. It 
will be well to begin by setting them down ; we will 
then deal briefly with them in order, and finally 
summarise our conclusions, that we may see clearly 
how they are all linked together. We have to consider 
then : 

(I) The characteristics and nature of the lower 
stages of evolution, (II) their fundamental cause, 
(III) the question of consciousness and self-con- 
sciousness, (IV) the creation wrought by the creature 
in the course of its evolution, (V) the higher stages : 
freewill as a product of progress, (VI) sin in relation 
to the evolutionary process. 

(I) The characteristics and nature of the lower 
stages of evolution. Huxley, in a magnificent lecture 



24 Ethical and Cosmic Processes 

on " Evolution and Ethics 1 ," expressed his conviction 
that the great world-process is not merely non-moral, 
but actively "anti-moral. A survey of the inflexible 
hardness of the world-process, the uladiatorial nature 
of the strife, the apotheosis of success at another's 
cost, " the unfathomable injustice of the nature of 
things " as exemplified in the animal kingdom, drives 
him to a condemnation of the cosmic evolution as a 
whole. " Brought before the tribunal of Ethics the 
cosmos stands condemned : the microcosmic atom has 
found the illimitable macrocosm guilty." And looking 
back over man's thought of the universe he is struck 
by the fact that both in the Bast and in the West those 
schools of philosophy which considered the bro; 
issues of thought, which did not concentrate on the 
microcosm, through ethics, and so lose the key to a 
macrocosmic understanding, as did Socrates and Plato, 
were forced to the same conclusion 2 . For Gautama 
Buddha, the inheritor of the Brahmanic tradition, 
matter and mind alike were nought, the cosmic pro- 
cess was an evil from which Nirvana was the only 
rest ; and so, not by asceticism so much as by the 
complete obliteration of the self that is one in nature 
with the world's struggle, man ought to seek deliverance 
from the wheel by reaching the state " when a man 
had but to dream that he willed not to dream, to put 

1 Romanes Lecture 1893. 
■ Ibid. p. 22. 



The Solution of Huxley 25 

an end to all dreaming." And Democritus and the 
Stoics, inheriting the tradition of Heracleitus, find too 
a warfare between the cosmic process and righteous- 
ness, from which the only escape is in dirdOeia 1 . " By 
the Tiber as by the Ganges, ethical man admits that 
the cosmos is too strong for him ; and destroying every 
bond which ties him to it by ascetic discipline, he seeks 
salvation in absolute renunciation 2 ." 

If we assume the premises, that is if. with the 
ancient evolutionist philosophers like Gautama and 
Democritus and with the moderns like Huxley, we 
see in the world a vain and hopeless struggle between 
two antagonistic processes, the ethical and the cosmic. 
in which the cosmic process must prove victor, there 
are two other solutions of the problem possible besides 
the pessimistic quietism of Buddhism and of the 
earlier Stoicism. The one which Huxley himself 
advocates is daring and audacious : to pit the micro- 
cosm against the macrocosm, the ethical against the 
cosmic, in unequal strife : a forlorn hope, perhaps 
hardly rational, but at least nobler than the other. 
It is the position which the pure agnostic, recognising 
and paying homage to the beauty of the ethical ideal, 
refusing to acquiesce in the triumph of evil, yet unable 
to find any key that will unlock the door of horn 
through which true spirits pass, must take. It hopes 
against hope that there may be hope, and so hoping 

1 Dispassionate calm. 2 Romanes Lecture 1893, p. 29. 



26 The Solution of Nietzsche 

erects an altar to the unknown God. This is to side 
with the weaker in an unequal struggle. 

The other solution is to side, like Nietzsche, with 
the strong, to worship the cosmic process as exemplify- 
ing strength and success. 

" What is good ? — All that increases the feeling of 
power, will to power, power itself, in man. What is 
bad ? — All that proceeds from weakness. 

" What is happiness ? — The feeling that power in- 
creases — that resistance is overcome. 

" Not contentedness, but more power : ><<>/ peaoe at 
any price, but warfare ; not virtue, but capacity (virtue 
in the Renaissance style, virtu, virtue free from any 
moralic-acid). 

" The weak and ill-constituted shall perish : i 
principle of our charity, and people shall help them 
to do so. What is more injurious than any crime ? — 
Practical sympathy for all the ill-constituted and 
weak : — Christianity 1 ." Nietzsche has a chapter in 
The Twilight of the Idols headed " Morality as Anti- 
naturalness," and his conclusion is that Ethicfl must 
go, that Nature, the cosmic process, may have un- 
hindered sway 2 . 

We have here three answers to the problem of the 

1 Nietzsche, Antichrist, § 2. 

2 It is worthy of incidental notice that Nietzsche neglects the 
fundamental altruism implied in the continuity of the germ-plasm, 
vide infra, ch. vn. Nordau rightly calls him the philosopher of ego- 
mania (Degeneration, p. 415). 



Criticism of Huxley 27 

macrocosm and microcosm. The problem itself is based 
on evolution, and the answer must recognise this. The 
first answer counsels quietism, the second a well-nigh 
hopeless struggle, the third a siding with the stronger, 
which at first sight appears to ensure success— of a 
sort. 

But is this the only choice ? 

Professor Henry Jones in his inaugural address in 
the University of Glasgow in 1894, discussing the view 
put forward by Huxley, laid his finger on the weak 
spot in Huxley's argument. Huxley admits explicitly 
in a very important note that the evolution of ethics 
is part of the cosmic process 1 . How then, says 
Professor Jones, can it be so fundamentally opposed 
to the cosmic process if it is the outcome of it ? We 
are offered a dualism in which one antagonistic prin- 
ciple arises from the other, Ormuzd from Ahriman, 
a continuity in name alone. " Between the natural 
process, which culminates in the savage, and the moral 
process, which begins with civilised man, there is a 
complete solution of continuity 2 ." The system the 
critic offers is also a dualism, comprehended in a 
higher unity. We have the cosmic process, we have 
the ethical process ; " the majesty of the natural world 
is the result of a combined endeavour, and the still more 
solemn majesty of the world of goodness is the product 
of the interaction of man with man, and of all men 

1 Op. cit. note 19. - Ibid. p. 21. 



28 The Degradation of Energy 

with nature." Only through and by the aid of nature 
can man's ethical intelligence become operative ; 
nature herself being without knowledge is neither 
moral nor immoral, but neutral, non-moral. Pain and 
struggle, " an agony of endeavour," are the conditions 
of progress, but only pessimism, which is hedonism 
veneered, sees an eternal injustice in pain. 

One cannot feel that such a solution is final. It con- 
geals the surface of reality with verbal compromises 
over which the reason skates lightly, ignoring the 
depths below. But reason runs a risk : the ice is \ vrv 
thin. 

There is another aspect of the question which at 
least does not ignore the depths, and with this aspect 
Bergson deals most capably in U Evolution Cicatrice. 
There are two opposing tendencies in the cosmos 
to-day, but they are not the moral and the anti- 
moral. The first, the great universal pr< - the 
degradation of energy ; its mathematical expression is 
known to scientists under the name of the Second Law 
of Thermodynamics. Put generally the principle may 
be enunciated thus : all energy tends to become less 
available. By available energy is meant the energy 
that can do work. The sun is cooling ; this means 
that its heat is tending to a more uniform distribution, 
to become less available. A boiler over a furnace is 
more effective in driving an engine than a great lake — 
though the latter contains a greater quantity of heat 



The Degradation of Energy 29 

— because its heat is at higher pressure, so to speak. 
All energy in the long run tends to be degraded into 
heat, which in its turn tends to a uniform distribution, 
rendering it not available. 

Whence then, we may ask, did the energy come in 
the beginning % We do not know. The physicist talks 
wisely about intra-molecular conditions, but he does 
not know 1 . The philosopher has recourse to a Creative 
Absolute, but he can offer no direct proof. Bergson, 
by a subtle argument, which I confess leaves me rather 
cold, concludes that it must be extra-spatial and there- 
fore immaterial 2 . He denies, that is, that any physical 
explanation could be absolute. But at^least the philo- 
sophers can offer an efficient cause, while the naturalists 
at best suggest a more or less hypothetical cause which 
might possibly be efficient. 

Now this phenomenon of dissipation of energy, or 
running down, is characteristic of everything that pro- 
duces or tends to produce motion, as much of muscular 
motion or brain-motion as of the purely mechanical 
forms. For the sake of brevity we may borrow a 
word from the physiologists to describe it, hatabolism. 
Katabolism then represents for us the process of 
running down, of the degradation of energy into 
(eventually) heat, whether it be a purely mechanical 
matter, in the physical world, or whether it be the 

1 vide infra, p. 30. 

2 Creative Evolution (Eng. Trs.), p. 258. 



30 The Life-Process 

breaking down of animal products that supplies the 
energy for motion and muscular action in living 
organisms. 

But in living matter alone an opposite tendency 
also is manifested. The animal can absorb fairly simple 
substances with a comparatively small energy-content, 
and by its own vital activity can build them up into 
the complex substances of which it is itself composed, 
whose energy-content is great. In other words, it is 
able to make a kind of animal gun-cotton whose ex- 
plosion can be turned to practical account later on. 
True, the total amount of enemy it stores up is not 
greater in quantity than the energy it receives from 
the divers food-stuffs it has absorbed, but it is so to 
speak at higher pressure. But in the long run the 
food it absorbs depends on plants : either it is vege- 
tarian itself, or it feeds on animals who are rians 
or have vegetarian prey. The plant however is able 
to take its food in almost the simplest possible form, 
from the gases of the air and the salts of the 
thanks to the fact that it possesses a green colouring- 
matter which can utilise the energy of the sun. In 
the long run then, the energy which is stored up in 
the more and more complex explosives which have been 
evolved in the animal kingdom to enable the animal to 
react with more and more efficiency to stimuli, is 
derived from the dissipation of energy which is going 
on in the sun. 



Inorganic Evolution a Cycle 31 

True ; but as Bergson points out, the dissipation 
is checked, even in a measure reversed, by the animal. 
Borrowing again the corresponding term from physi- 
ology we may say that there is here an anabolic change 
— a winding up or storing of energy. And this is 
the most characteristic phenomenon of Life, — charac- 
teristic of life and of nothing else — that, side by side 
with the katabolic changes of the world, which it is 
powerless wholly to stop or reverse, we find anabolism, 
a process checking, even temporarily reversing, them. 

It is true that there is also a process of building up, 
of storing energy, in matter itself. If we define evo- 
lution as a process of passing from the simple to the 
complex, from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, 
we must admit that there is a kind of evolution among 
the heavenly bodies. The small particles into which 
planetary systems are always disintegrating, are driven 
away by the pressure of light ; in the cold emptiness of 
space some of them come within each others' range of 
attraction, unite, and so form a centre of gravitational 
attraction for countless myriads more, until a nebula 
is formed ; and after many million years this resolves 
into a fresh planetary system. Energised by intra- 
atomic forces, only known to us since the discoverv 
of radium, it glows again, a new sun with new planets 
round it — to break down after the allotted span is 
passed ; and so on in unchanging rhythm, until 
perhaps, even the radium force is exhausted — for 



32 Life a Struggle against Katabolism 

energy is absorbed as the pressure of light drives the 
particles out from the attraction of the system of which 
they formed a part — matter itself ceases to be, the 
strains in the ether which we call matter come to rest, 
and the universe is — Nothing 1 . But here we have no 
progress, only a cycle ; and as we shall see, progress 
is an integral part of true evolution. Moreover, in 
our world, and indeed in any world in which life 
could exist, energy is always being dissipated, and 
is becoming less available. Only life can reverse this 
process, even temporarily. And again, we see that 
all this cosmic process is determined, wholly pre- 
dicate. In life alone is there any trace of freedo 

In the evolution of living things then wc 
constant warfare between the katabolic and anabolic 
principles, the katabolic prevailing always it is true — 
death always wins the victory over the individual — 
but at each successive stage the anabolic principle 
making a better bid for victory by forming more 
efficient energy-stores for the purpose of controlling 
more effectively the animal's destiny. And now the 
light begins to break. 

Here is the " agony of endeavour " certainly, but 
the justification of the belief of Professor Henry Jones 
that " the optimist, while acknowledging that * sorrow 

1 For a popular account of the evolutionary cycle of the 
cf. Geoffry Martin, Triumphs and Wonders of Modem C k e mi ti 
and Worthington, The Pressure of Light. 



Huxley's Antithesis too superficial 33 

is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,' may claim 
that, after all, the testimony of the moral consciousness 
means something ; and that. . .the ways of the world, 
even though they tend to misery, are not unfathomably 
unjust " — this at the worst, apart from the positive 
gains of capacity for joy. capacity for music, capacity 
for knowledge and the like — begins to emerge 1 , and 
the belief itself to take shape. 

There are two contending principles. At first the 
weaker, anabolism gains ground steadily, in spite of the 
victory of katabolism over the individual, which victory 
means death. But since Life first began death has 
never had the mastery. The individual dies as a 
whole, but certain cells of his body survive, uniting 
generally with a cell from another individual, and the 
life passes on down the ages. The silver cord is never 
loosed. For the individual there must be the pain of 
failure, there must always be the Sisyphaean effort to 
store up energy, to resist the downward tendency of 
that energy, the fruitless endeavour to stem the tide 
of katabolism. Hence the agony. But in the whole 
there is success ; the life is perpetuated ; all the kata- 
bolic effort of the world-process cannot withstand the 
slow advance of the evolving organism. The anabolic 
tendency persists : the weak succeeds, the strong fails. 
To this we shall have to return. At present our 
purpose in introducing it is to show that Huxley's 
1 Op. cit. p. 19. 

M. 3 



34 The Vital Impvlse 

antithesis between the world-process and the ethical 
principle does not go deep enough : later we shall 
find that we are led to deny the truth of the anti- 
thesis altogether. It is enough now that we have 
seen that the fundamental principle of evolution is 
the struggle between the katabolic and the anabolic 
tendencies, in which we find reason to believe that the 
ultimate victory is not to the strong. The struggle lies 
deeper than Huxley supposed, in the very beginnings 
of evolution. 

(II) We have next to consider briefly what is the 
fundamental cause of evolution. In the last chapter 
we saw that once life is given, vital evolution as a first 
approximation may be defined as a response to environ- 
ment, a strife after a complete equilibrium that is 
always receding as fresh factors of the environment 
come into play. And we saw too that an organism 
might, and often did, by permitting its own adaptation 
to a comparatively limited environment, reach a stable 
equilibrium, destined thenceforward to live on un- 
progressing until, in the course of ages, some change 
in its environment rendered it a prey to adverse 
circumstances and it perished, like the great reptiles 
or the giant armadillos of past epochs. In other words, 
we had to admit that within the organism there must 
be kept alive a divine unrest, an unconscious refusal to 
accept the present as the end, ever urging it forward 
or, eventually, annihilation must result. Bergson 



Aspects of the Vital Impulse 35 

likewise concludes that there is something which he 
calls the vital impulse, urging the creation forward 
along the path of evolution 1 . For the sake of brevity 
and clearness we will adopt this term. 

We see then that the vital impulse must be iden- 
tified with a tendency to progressive anabolism, or at 
least that it is the cause of this tendency. But when 
equilibrium is reached the organism ceases to become 
progressively anabolic ; it rests content as it is ; it loses 
the vital impulse. And so, refusing to identify itself 
with the principle of progress, it re-identifies itself 
with the principle of degradation, of katabolism ; having 
struggled laboriously a little way up the road to 
freedom, it gives up the strife, and since there is no 
possibility of rest, eventually suffers the inevitable 
doom. No longer identified with the anabolic process, 
it is overwhelmed and swept away by the katabolic 
flood, and perishes. 

The cause of evolution then lies in this divine 
unrest, this vital impulse, this tendency to progressive 
anabolism ; one might say this continued responsiveness 
to environmental conditions. Behind this thing, to 
which we have given various names as we looked at 
it from various aspects, there must lie a final cause, 
else how did it come to be ? We have seen from the 

1 When the chapter in question was written I was unacquainted 
with M. Bergson's writings : the conclusions were arrived at inde- 
pendently. 

3—2 



36 Life and Consciousness 

side of biology, as others have from the side of philo- 
sophy and of religion, that the final cause that seems 
to be indicated is God. As always, one is brought 
in the long run face to face with the necessity of a 
causa efficiens at the back of everything. But for 
our present purpose it is going far enough back if 
we take as the fundamental cause of evolution the 
vital impulse that is found throughout the animate 
world. 

(Ill) The question of consciousness and self-con- 
sciousness. I think we should not be wrong if we said 
that Bergson's explanation of the nature of the vital 
impulse was that it is the struggle of consciousness 
towards self-expression. He speaks of it as "the motive 
principle of evolution 1 "; as "a need of creation 2 "; 
he states that " the role of life is to insert some in- 
determination into matter 3 " ; the main energy of life 
being spent in creating a sensori-motor nervous system 
which " is a veritable reservoir of indetermination 4 ." 
Life to him is " consciousness launched into matter 5 ." 
With the question of will that is introduced by the 
word " indetermination " we shall have to deal in the 
next chapter, and at present we will disregard it. The 
questions that concern us at the present moment are. 

1 Creative Evolution (Eng. Trs.), p. 192. 

2 Ibid. p. 275. 3 Ibid. p. 132 

4 Ibid. p. 133. See note on the use of the word indetermination 
in next chapter, p. 42. 

5 Ibid. p. 191. 



Homo faber 37 

first, the justification for thus identifying the vital 
impulse with consciousness : and, second, the relation 
of the Bergsonian consciousness, which is in its earlier 
stages unconscious, with the true developed conscious- 
ness, which is self-consciousness. And on the face of it 
it is obvious that these two questions overlap. 

The answers are involved in his whimsical alteration 
of the specific name of man — Homo faber instead of 
Homo sapiens. The first use man makes of conscious- 
ness is to devise tools, to form himself into a committee 
of ways and means, for the purpose of improving his 
lot. And all the evidence we possess seems to point 
to this as the chief aim of the evolutionary process. 
After all, this is but another way of saying that its aim 
is completer adaptation to environment ; only, in the 
lowest stages there is no element of what we ordinarily 
mean by consciousness involved, though doubtless there 
is continuity, a kind of embryonic consciousness being 
present. But there is adaptation, the bending of matter 
to the ends of life, the creation of tools for completer, 
fuller living, always going on. When life is condemned 
to automatism, that is when an equilibrium-position 
has been reached, consciousness lies dormant, in the 
sense that it is no longer progressive ; and, as when 
a stream has flowed into a back water, stagnation 
and decay follow. And this dormancy is in truth a 
coma, the prelude to death. But in the main stream 
there is always the progressive adaptation. 



38 The Continuity of Consciousness 

Now the meaning of all this is surely that there is 
continuity between the conscious tool-fashioning of 
primitive man — and indeed we may use the same 
words of many of the higher animal artificers — and 
what we must term the unconscious tool-fashioning, 
adaptation, in the lower forms of life. We may surely 
admit this without entering into the question of in- 
stinct and reason in the artifices of animals, which would 
involve inter alia a discussion of Bergson's Intuitionism 
far beyond the scope of this book. 

If then we see in the earliest acts of consciousness 
the same fashioning of tools, the same impulse towards 
the subjugation of matter, that we recognise as the 
characteristic of all evolution, we are surely not wrong 
in predicating the continuity of consciousness with 
the vital impulse that urges on the organism to this 
same subjugation of matter. And if there is con- 
tinuity the differences must be in degree and not in 
kind 1 . 

But between consciousness in this sense and self- 
consciousness there is a fundamental difference, though 
the one almost certainly undergoes a gradual transition 
into the other. In the first the creature recognises the 
value of tools, in the second he realises himself as the 
maker of tools, and as other things. It might easily 
be argued that the break is in a measure apparent only, 
being due to the gradual change of the sphere of action 
1 See ch. vi. pp. 134—137. 



and Self-consciousness 39 

of the vital impulse, which in lower forms is directed 
mainly towards matter, while in higher forms it becomes 
inwardly directed towards the perfecting of itself. 
This idea seems to underlie Bergson's discussion of the 
bifurcation of consciousness into intellect and intuition. 
(See especially Creative Evolution, pp. 191, 192.) And 
it seems to me that there is considerable justification for 
such an argument. The great point to keep in view is 
that, without committing ourselves to a statement that 
the method is absolutely continuous, we are bound to 
recognise that the aim is continuous. The creature 
directs his energies towards the making of tools, at first 
in obedience to a blind impulse, later with open eyes, 
and last of all he realises himself as a maker of tools. 
But he does not then cease to make them : on the 
contrary he bends a fuller energy to his task. 

The object of the impulse all through is one : 
completer adaptation to surroundings. In the lower 
forms this is blind reaction, if you will, between en- 
vironment and matter animated by the vital impulse. 
But higher up in the scale some sort of recognition of 
the aim is manifestly present, together with a recog- 
nition of some of the environmental conditions with 
which the organism has to cope. And still higher, as 
we have seen, the response is conditioned by quite new- 
acting factors, the recognition of which seems to me to 
involve necessarily a realisation of interdependence 
between means and ends, that is between, not tools 



40 Summary 

and ends as heretofore, but tool- making and ends, 
which recognition is surely the beginning of self- 
consciousness. A discussion of self-consciousness is 
impossible however without a consideration of self- 
determination or freedom of action, which belongs 
properly to the next chapter. We shall return to this 
matter briefly there, but it is beyond the scope of this 
work to do more than suggest lines of thought which 
may prove helpful. 

To sum up what we have said in the present 
chapter. We saw first of all that the older view of 
the cosmos which sees a struggle between the cosmic 
and the ethical processes does not go deep enough. 
Only three solutions of the problem thus stated are 
possible, the quietism of Gautama and the Stoics, the 
hopeless, aimless, noble struggle of Huxley, the anti- 
altruism of Nietzsche ; and besides there is the patient 
optimism of Jones, not really very different in kind 
from Huxley's pathetic hope that 

"....something en the end. 
Some work of noble note may vet be done." 

We have seen that the struggle really lies deeper, in 
the deathless upspringing of the anabolic process that 
death cannot kill. Katabolism conquers in the indi- 
vidual, but in the race the anabolic process is victorious. 
We then considered Bergson's identification of the 
vital impulse with consciousness ; and finally from the 
side of unity, or rather of continuity, of aim, we tried 



Summary 41 

to show that there was evidence for the derivation of 
self-consciousness from the blind impulse of life. 

In the next chapter we have to discuss the creative 
power of the evolving creature. This has been so 
masterly dealt with by Bergson that we shall again 
follow him largely in the earlier part of the chapter. 



CHAPTER III 

EVOLUTION AND FREEDOM 

(IV and V) The creation wrought by the creature 
in the course of its evolution ; and freewill as a prod 
of progress. In a previous chapter we noticed that 
by its own changes the organism creates fresh con- 
ditions for itself and for other organisms (page 9), 
and in regard to this we made two connnei *ly, 

that as more and more organisms approach a condition 
of equilibrium the increase of these secondarily- 
created environmental conditions becomes pr< lv 
less (page 9), and, secondly, that although M up to 
a certain point what is created ifl a function of t 
total environment M yeA when the consciousness be- 
comes in any degree self-conscious, and perhfl er, 
the value of these functions becomes not only unknown 
but unknowable (page 10), This last conclusion, 
though arrived at quite independently, is identical 
with M. Bergson's view already quoted that " the 
role of life is to insert some ^determination 1 into 

1 We would remind our readers that inddermimation is here used 
in the sense of freedom from the strict law of causality, and not in 
the sense we gave to it in a different connection in chap. i. B 
note, p. 5. 



Emergence of Freedom 43 

matter. Indeterminate, i.e. unforeseeable, are the forms 
it creates in the course of its evolution. More and 
more indeterminate also, more and more free, is the 
activity to which these forms serve as the vehicle. A 
nervous system, with neurones placed end to end in 
such wise that, at the extremity of each, manifold 
ways open in which manifold questions present them- 
selves, is a veritable reservoir of indetermination " 
(Creative Evolution, pp. 132, 133). 

Why do we arrive at this conclusion ? Often the 
fresh environment created by the evolving organism 
is the necessary consequence of its own evolution, and 
is therefore a function of the pre-existing environment 
which could be prophesied by a kind of process of 
extrapolation, as mathematicians term the continuing 
of a curve from what has gone before. But as soon as 
the active designing of tools comes into play, as soon, 
that is, as there is a choice of method for the completer 
adaptation to conditions ; or, to speak more exactly, as 
soon as there is the possibility of choice of the par- 
ticular conditions of the total environment that shall 
receive the next response ; there is unquestionably 
indetermination, not perhaps as to the direction of the 
next move, at any rate in the lower stages, but as to 
the exact method that will be adopted to compass 
some end ; for it is impossible to conceive what will 
be the solution of a dilemma before the dilemma is 
solved. We cannot stay to discuss the truth of this 



44 Emergence of Freedom 

last statement here : reference may be made to the 
third chapter of Bergson's Essai sur les Donnees Imme- 
diates de la Conscience (Eng. Trs. by Pogson under title 
Time and Free-will) and to James' "Dilemma of 
Determinism " in The Will to Believe 1 . Throughout 
this essay we shall have to assume the possibility of 
freedom : our only concern will be whether this possi- 
bility is actualised in life. But of this we shall have 
more to say shortly. 

The creature, then, comes into a world, where it 
is at once constrained on almost every side by blind 
forces with which it cannot cope, which compel it to 
follow an assigned path whose direction is indicated 
by the past ; and each step it takes along the destined 
way adds many more constraining forces. Yet the 
path has no reality till it has been traversed. Behind, 
it lies clear, hedged in with conditions that make it 
appear inevitable that it should have been exactly 
what it is. But in front the possible paths spread 
fanwise till the next step causes the waiting environ- 
mental forces to close in, like bushes in a dream-hedge, 
marking clearly the traversed road and making what 
seemed a moment before indeterminate, clear and in- 
evitable, as if it had been a road laid out from eternity. 
Nevertheless, the direction is indicated by the trend 

1 See also the discussion of this question, from a somewhat 
different standpoint, in Ward's The Bialm of Ends, and Tennant's 
The Concept of Sin. 



Progress and Freedom 45 

of the traversed way : there will be no sudden doubling 
back, no sharp turn ; but yet the future at each moment 
is still in a large measure indeterminate. Does this 
seem to contradict what we said before about evolu- 
tion not being indeterminate 1 , about the necessity of 
progress as a result of response to environmental 
conditions ? Surely it is not so. The evolutionary 
path of the organism is roughly predetermined by the 
past, but at each moment it is indeterminate in many 
details ; yet each step reduces this indetermination, 
unless the organism has chosen the true direction of 
progress, the line towards completer anabolism, the 
road to emancipation of the consciousness, to self- 
determination. And the stimulus that drives the 
organism to wander forth is that same impulse which 
we have identified with consciousness. Thus progress 
is rendered inevitable in the long run by the fact that 
the organisms which " choose " other paths find them- 
selves involved in a blind alley, which implies that 
failure which the organism is striving to avoid, its 
re-snaring in the toils of katabolism. For the organism 
itself there is some measure of indetermination, for the 
race, apparently, none. We must not press the analogy 
of our illustration, but it serves its purpose to show to 
what extent there is determination, to what extent 
indetermination. 

1 In the sense in which the word is used in chap. i. 



46 Creative Evolution 

As the creature evolves, then, it creates : not only 
does it create for itself a path : that after all is a kind 
of retrospective creation : is hardly a creation at all ; 
but it marks out its path for the future in some 
measure. Further, by its very progress it actually 
creates fresh conditions in its own total environment 
and in that of other creatures. To take a crude 
instance : suppose it develops in the direction of speed 
in order to capture its prey. Its new swiftness will 
enable it to capture other animals it could not catch 
before, and so its diet, and thence its habits, may 
be considerably changed. And the effect of this on 
any other beasts it preys upon is manifold. Some 
may tend by natural selection to become more swift ; 
some will take refuge in thick woods, others in pro- 
tective colouration ; and this again will affect their 
prey, and so in ever-widening circles. Of course the 
illustration is a crude one, but it may serve to point 
the argument. The important fact is that the varia- 
tion adopted to avoid the determinate katabolic enemy 
introduces fresh conditions into the environment of 
others. The whole idea, though in a more subtle 
form, permeates Bergson's conception of the cosmic 
process, and his treatment of it is so full that we 
cannot do better than refer the reader to his treatise. 
The only points it is necessary to bring out for our 
purpose are these : — that each step, though conditioned 
largely by the past, is yet in a measure self-determined : 



Creative Evolution 47 

that even in the lower stages each step not only deter- 
mines, but actually in part creates, certain conditions 
of the future total environment for itself and for other 
organisms ; and that the higher we go the more effective 
becomes this creative power. 

It is quite clear that the influences due to organ- 
isms cannot exist until the organisms themselves are 
brought into being. In this sense it is obvious that 
we are justified in speaking of the creation of environ- 
ment by the creature. But in many cases the nature 
of this creation could be prophesied : the development 
of protective mimicry in one race must tend to the 
increase in distinguishing power in another race which 
preys on it : here a new factor of elusiveness is intro- 
duced into the total environment of the individuals of 
the second race, and produces its corresponding re- 
action by the ordinary means. But that the first race 
should indulge in the vagary of protective mimicry 
in order to save itself from death, however rational it 
seems when it is done, is surely unforeseeable. There 
were so many other more simple ways of escape. 
From the point of view of the second race at any 
rate an entirely unforeseen, unforeseeable addition to 
the environment has been created. From any point 
of view it is hard to picture this step as foreseeable. 
It is an action of the unconscious consciousness for the 
purpose of making use of lichens, or grass, or what-not, 
for self-protection ; in a sense it makes a tool of them. 



48 Animal Artificers 

And what of the Fishing Frog (Lophius piscator 
which converts a fold of skin on its head into a rod 
and line and worm, and lies hidden in the mud beneath 
the bait till some unwary fish falls victim ? What of 
his deep-water relative Melanocetus Murrayii, who, 
living in the dark, keeps a trembling spark as bait 
at the end of his line, to delude the unwary fish into 
the belief that here was a luminous crustacean whose 
locomotive organs had gone wrong ? What of the 
South-American beetle-larva that develops a five- 
clawed hand on one of its legs and a gridiron on its 
body, by means of which it produces a shriek like 
a slate pencil to tell its mother it is hungry ? What 
of the Sphex which paralyses its caterpillar victim by 
nine several stings in the nine nerve-centres so as to 
provide its young with living food ? Surely this is 
tool-making, even if not of a fully conscious kind. 
And what of the monkey that weaves a shelter over 
its head to keep off the rain ? What of the tailor-bird 
that searches for a fibre with which to sew other leaves 
together ? Are we to say that all these were wholly 
determinate, foreseeable ? One could readily construct 
a series beginning with a non-conscious shaping of 
customs to suit ends, and going on without any break 
to cases of absolutely unquestionable tool-making from 
external objects, done consciously by man. These last 
are certainly not foreseeable, if there be such a thing 
as freedom possible : only a very strong obsession in 



Unconscious Artifices and Conscious Tool-making 49 

favour of determinism could deal with them as wholly 
products of circumstances ; and the series from these 
downwards — and upwards — is complete. 

It may perhaps be said that all these cases may be 
simply questions of experimental variations, of which 
the suitable ones get selected ; and that the appearance 
of voluntarism that some of them have is simply the 
result of this selection of what is suitable ; and that 
if, on the other hand, one admits that some of them are 
ingenious inventions of the individual, one is landed 
in Lamarckianism, since one is tacitly introducing the 
inheritance of acquired characters. 

But if we are not determinists — and we assume we 
are not — we know that certain of our actions are free. 
that we are often free to shape and choose the tools or 
means whereby we may realise some particular desire 
or need. In other words, man the workman can to 
some extent choose his tools. But dogs, and elephants 
too, shape and choose tools to subserve ends, and so do 
monkeys. As we go down there is no possibility of 
drawing a definite line between a choice of tools that 
has something of the voluntary in it and one that has 
not. Only, down at the bottom of the scale, we say that 
the light-sensitive pigment spot of a Euglena, which 
enables it to regulate its movements, is but a localisa- 
tion, evolved by selection on the normal lines, from the 
diffuse phototactic sensibility that is characteristic of 
many aquatic organisms. Thus we must recognise the 
m. 4 



50 Unconscious Artifices and Conscious Toohmak'nty 

fact that, as so often in nature, we cannot draw a line : 
there is continuity : there are no real gaps between 
such instances as this and the ingenuity of the skilled 
human being. The determinist will welcome this 
conclusion, but he will still be face to face with the 
dilemma of determinism in man. If, however, on 
philosophical grounds, we throw aside materialistic 
determinism, and recognise that there is freedom in 
the human being, we are forced by this very continuity 
to conclude that in all life there is something of free- 
dom, even in response to environment : that is to say, 
that there is some choice of the environment to which 
there shall be response in cases of dubiety. In other 
words, we must conclude that life is a plastic entity 
that can be moulded by its environment, but yet in 
which there is an impulse which is always tendii | 
one end, anabolism, and opposing the determinate 
nature of the katabolism in the inanimate cosmos. 

This is of such fundamental importance that we 
must, at the risk of repetition, go into it in more detail. 

Where does the factor indetermination come in in 
the interplay of variation and selection I 

We have seen in Chapter i that progress is in- 
evitable, owing to the existence of a spirit of unrest 
in the organism which itself is always being urged 
towards an equilibrium. This equilibrium is reached 
early by some which go up blind alleys, but those 
which follow the path of progress, which is the path 



Variation and Pw*pose 51 

towards adaptation to the " highest " environment, 
can never reach equilibrium, and so they progress. 
Indeed we may say that the environment is always 
urging towards equilibrium, from which the organism 
is always seeking to escape. Hence comes an element 
of purposiveness in the variations, an element of 
freedom. It is here, in the recognition, unconscious if 
you will, of the fact that equilibrium involves death, 
that an element of indetermination, opposing the 
determinism of the cosmos, comes in ; and stated thus 
it is obvious that no taint of Lamarckianism is in the 
conception. It is a misuse of terms to speak of the 
ingenuity of the individual in this connection. The 
whole phenomenon is the result of the strife of the 
underlying anti-determinate, anti-katabolic anabolism 
which is life, and which is here simply coming to the 
surface in the individual. 

It has been impossible in the foregoing discussion 
to keep the idea of the creation by the individual 
separate from the indetermination which renders that 
creation possible. But having cleared the ground we 
can now develop the argument on these matters briefly 
and definitely. 

(IV) The creation wrought by the creature in its 
evolution is then of two kinds, apart from the apparent 
creation of a determined path for itself to which we 
have alluded, which is in truth no creation, but rather 
what we may call the resultant of the interplay of the 

4—2 



52 Predicable and non-predicable Factors 

forces of environment and variation. In the first place 
there is the foreseeable creation of the conditions, for 
example, that will arise for a group of organisms, 
following on an increase in speed of pursuit of another 
group of organisms that prey on them. They will 
have to hurry up. 

For the first as for the second group these fresh 
environmental conditions were predicable from what 
went before. They were functions of the pre-existing 
environment, unknown, created by the organism, for 
they were not existent in the previous environment- 
sum ; but yet their creation could have been prophesied 
by that same process of extrapolation. 

(V) Freewill as a product of progress. On the 
other hand in the making of tools, that is in the action 
of compelling inanimate objects to subserve the ends of 
the organism, there is unquestionably a factor intro- 
duced that is not foreseeable. That a bird should hide 
its nest, should make it of such materials as to be 
inconspicuous is easy enough to understand ; but that 
a bird should sew other leaves together to make an 
inconspicuous nursery, is surely hard to conceive as 
foreseeable ? In the making of tools by man there is 
certainly freedom, creating a fresh environmental factor 
for the fishes which are tempted by an artificial fly, or 
the pheasants which are shot ; and, as we have already 
said, where is one to draw the line in the lower stages 
of evolution ? 



Will 53 

If our analysis be true, there is then throughout 
the animal kingdom — the vegetable kingdom does not 
concern us in this discussion — an element of freedom, 
which is an essential factor in the anabolism of living 
matter, enabling it to stem the tide of katabolism, to 
oppose the determinism of the cosmos that tends 
always towards the degradation of energy. This 
element of freedom itself develops as the organic 
world escapes more from the trammels of matter, be- 
coming capable of increasing expression as the creature 
becomes more and more able to bend matter to its 
own uses, to make tools. At last, when man, the 
supreme artificer, comes into being, the effort of the 
consciousness is directed towards other ends besides 
the subjugation of matter : it seeks self-expression. 
Becoming directed inwards upon itself it changes from 
consciousness to self-consciousness. Man the artificer 
begins to know himself, to recognise his own partial 
freedom, and to seek to perfect it. In this way an 
element of will comes into play ; the indetermination 
that was manifest throughout the evolutionary process, 
which led, blindly it is true, to the rejection of equi- 
librium and so to progress, becomes now a voluntary 
striving towards self-realisation, as well as a conscious 
effort to cope with and master matter : to make matter 
the servant of the conscious being. Doubtless we find 
attempts at voluntary control far lower down in the 
scale, but these never achieve more than a very limited 



54 Summary 

and fitful success in any animal but man ; the animal 
has not achieved its destiny, has yielded in a measure to 
the seduction of a restful equilibrium, has in a measure 
subscribed its acquiescence in a rest from endeavour 
which means death 1 , and so is unable to respond to 
its own strivings towards self-realisation in any large 
degree. 

Let us now summarise our conclusions so far. to see 
whither we are being led. 

The facts of Biology lead us to two conclusions ; 
first, that although progress is but response to environ- 
ment, yet, given the instinctive rejection of equilibrium- 
positions, the organism must pursue an apparently 
definite evolution, just as if its path were predeter- 
mined; and second, that since no evolution, even 
allowing for the existence of the vital impulse, can 
ever take place except as response to environment, 
there must be some suitable environment to call out 
the phenomenon we call spiritual progress. 

In Chapter n we went more deeply into the ques- 
tion of this vital impulse. We found that the warfare, 
in which Buddhists, Stoics, Gnostics, Christians and 

1 If it be objected that we have no right to say the other mammals 
are any less successful in their own way than man. the answer is 
simple and complete : the new factors introduced into their environ- 
ment by man have led to the extinction of many, and would lead to 
the extinction of many more but for the lately-evolved ideal of pity. 
Where is Steller's Sea-cow ? Where the aurochs and the bison ? 
Where the sabre-tooth tiger ? Where the dodo, and countless 
other forms ? 



Summary 55 

Agnostics alike saw the struggle of two evolutionary 
processes, the Cosmic and the Ethical, lies deeper than 
this, in the struggle of the life process which seeks 
freedom, against the dissipation of energy that is the 
essence of the determined material world. In the next 
three sections there was much overlapping and some 
repetition, but their object was to show the continuity 
of aim that underlies all progress, namely the increasing 
self-determination of the consciousness, until it wakes 
at last into self-consciousness. The creature eventually 
recognises its own aim, to subject matter to its own 
will, and progresses fast, till at length, turning inward 
on itself, it realises that the object of it all is some- 
thing different from everything else, the emergence of 
deathless life : that everything which had seemed an 
end was but a means to this : that the creature was no 
longer Homo faber but Homo spiritus, able to see a 
meaning in the long history of past struggle ; able 
to recognise in himself not merely a vehicle of the life 
but a person, not a drop in the stream of things but a 
voluntary bearer of the torch ; able to understand what 
was the environment to which he had been responding 
since he was a fragment of primordial protoplasm ; able 
to see in Whom he lived and moved and had his being. 
For a recognition of personality comes directly there 
is an inturning of the consciousness upon itself ; self- 
consciousness is a recognition of the self as an entity, 
which recognition lies at the bottom of personality. 



56 Personality 

In this, it seems to me, lies Bergson's weakness : 
he has lost sight of personality in his flux of in- 
tellect and intuition, the dichotomised branches of 
consciousness. And as soon as there is a realisation 
of personality, the demand for an understanding of its 
meaning must follow. It seems to men that personality 
must have its counterpart in the great world forces. 
And so we get attribution of transcendent personality 
to almost everything that is alive, whether tree or ox, 
and to many things that are inanimate (which per- 
sonality may persist after the death of the material 
body), as well as to the great natural forces, the winds, 
the thunder, and the rain. As the conception of per- 
sonality grows clearer these promiscuous attributions 
cease, but a race never becomes free from the need of 
attributing personality to something outside the in- 
dividual man : personality is in itself such a definite and 
peculiar thing that it must have some explanation that 
appreciates its value and does not regard it as a mere 
by-product. True, individuals by a strenuous course of 
self-discipline have managed to arrive at " a condition 
of impassive quasi-somnambulism, which, but for its 
acknowledged holiness, might run the risk of being 
confounded with idiocy " as Huxley expresses it, in 
which the sense of personality can be successfully 
obliterated ; but does anyone imagine that to the 
average men of the Buddhist races their religion means 
anything more than a passive quietism equivalent 



The Demand for a Personal Absolute 57 

to the quasi-Christian idea of " short toil, eternal 
rest " ? I for one cannot believe that an ordinary 
Buddhist does not regard himself as a person ; and 
the corruptions of Buddhism that pass current to-day 
show very clearly the need of concession to the natural 
human demand for some kind of transcendent per- 
sonality. 

Moreover, this demand is not a superstitious one : 
it is not only the untutored mind that seeks for a 
causa efficiens of the subtler attributes of personality 
outside the bounds of material evolution, even outside 
the bounds of an emotionless Absolute. Is there any 
reason why we should not extend our argument further 
and say that the evolution of personality is the suitable 
response to the spiritual environment we have found it 
necessary to postulate ? Surely this is necessarily true. 
And if so, there are certain attributes of personality, 
such as love, " understandingness," reciprocativeness, 
reason, that seem to demand attributes of the like 
kind in the spiritual environment that has evoked 
them. 

One cannot here entrust oneself to strictly formal 
proofs : as Bergson would perhaps contend, the matter 
lies outside the domain of pure intellect : it can only 
be approached successfully by intuition 1 . But it remains 
true that in all cases where the human mind has not 
relied too completely on pure intellect, and in so doing 
1 Creative Evolution, pp. 186, 192. 



58 Death of the Individual 

in a measure lost sight of personality even in man, it 
has found it necessary to endow the Transcendent 
Absolute, or whatever we choose to call it, with Per- 
sonality. At first this may seem contemptible as an 
argument, unstable as a foundation on which to build 
anything ; but I believe the more one thinks of it, 
the more one realises that, though it may be a poor 
argument, it is true. Personality is existent in man. 
though we cannot easily define it, and it does demand 
similar attributes in God, if God is to be more than an 
intellectual abstraction. 

(VI) Sin in relation to the evolutionary process. 
We must now pursue our train of reasoning to its 
logical issue and see to what conclusions w. 
driven. We have said that all life is a struggle 
between two processes, the anabolic and the katabolic. 
The essence of the katabolic process is determination : 
we are here dealing with a clock that has been wound 
up, it matters not how. and is now running down, 
every wheel performing an appointed task with no 
possibility of variation. Where there is degradation 
of energy there is in fact complete determinism. But 
opposing this universal principle of degradation we 
have the anabolic tendency of life, able, at least tem- 
porarily, to stem the tide ; involved in matter which has 
eventually to yield obedience to the sovereign sway of 
Death — Death, that represents the triumph of kata- 
bolism over life's corporal trappings — yet always 



and of the Race 59 

triumphing in a measure, compelling a small portion 
of that matter to remain subject and to act as the 
vehicle of the life itself, which cannot die ; a pro- 
gressive thing. 

And so the real victory is not to the strong. But 
if once an organism allows itself to drift into acceptance 
of an equilibrium-position, if, that is to say, it dis- 
regards the urgings of the consciousness or vital impulse, 
which urgings are the expression of the fact that life 
is progressive anabolism and nothing else, it ceases to 
identify itself with life, rests, and finally drifts into 
the stream of katabolism and is sw r ept away. The life 
has gone, and there is only matter which is subject to 
degradation. There may be a pause, as when a disc is 
balanced on the apex of a pyramid, for there is equi- 
librium. A lifeless anabolism, if I may use the term, 
an empty semblance of true life, where the processes of 
growth, individual death, and the passing on of the 
vital principle through a small particle of matter, 
remains ; but there is nothing progressive in it ; it 
has lost the power of increasing indetermination ; the 
vital impulse is dormant, but the sleep is coma pre- 
saging death. Some change of environment comes — 
either the degradation of energy in the surrounding 
world upsets the balance as it proceeds, or else it is 
altered by some new factor introduced by the indeter- 
minate life of other organisms ; at any rate the equi- 
librium is upset, and the living matter that had made 



60 Death of the Individual and of the Race 

terms with the principle of death is swept down by the 
overwhelming stream. 

Thus the death of the individual seems the natural 
outcome of a struggle in which the vital impulse is 
unable to bear up so large a quantity of matter against 
the stream, and so yields to the necessity of the moment, 
gives up a great part of the matter to death, and only 
retains that small quantity which is necessary for its 
own manifestation. But the death of the race is 
different wholly. It is the result of compromise with 
katabolism. The life makes treaty with the forces of 
decay, stipulating, so to speak, for a comfortable un- 
strenuous existence, and so unconsciously identifies 
itself with their ends by resigning its own. In other 
words, the race renounces the ideal of progressive 
anabolism which alone is able to withstand the 
cosmic flow, and so it too becomes involved in the 
fate that attends all matter and all energy for matter 
is but crystallised energy, the cyclic perpetuation of 
stresses. 

In what we have just said our thoughts were directed 
towards what in the ordinary sense of the word we 
should call unconscious organisms. But, as we have 
seen, this same anabolic impulse which we, with 
Bergson, have agreed to identify with consciousness, 
becomes freer and freer the higher we go in the scale, 
until it becomes clearly self-determination, conscious 
tool-fashioning. And then at last man the artificer 






Sin 61 

becomes man the spirit : the consciousness, becoming 
inwardly directed on itself, becomes self-consciousness. 
As soon as this stage is reached man may be said to 
become a living soul : man, Homo spiritus, has now 
his destiny in his own hands in a large measure. He 
has reached a stage when a higher environment, a 
spiritual one, can act on him. And, having achieved 
a large measure of conscious self-determination, he is 
able to aid his own progress voluntarily : he has the 
power of voluntary response to environment. 

But it is voluntary. He may choose not to respond. 
He may prefer to remain comparatively un-spiritual. 
He may prefer not to progress. This is what we 
ordinarily term sin — the choosing of the lower rather 
than the higher of two possible courses. But is it not, 
in essence, the acceptance of an equilibrium-position, 
the voluntary repudiation of the anabolic principle, 
the identification of the will with katabolism ? x^nd 
we have seen that in the lower stages this meant 
death. Is it, then, that sin is essentially the iden- 
tification of the will with death ? It is with this 
thought that we shall be concerned in the coming 
chapters. 



CHAPTER IV 



THE ORIGIN OF SIX 



The publication of Tennant' s Hulsean Lectures on 
Sin 1 in 1902 marked an epoch for many minds. To 
the ordinary thinking Christian these lectures repre- 
sented a new thing : a courageous attempt to face the 
problem of the nature of sin in the li^ht of evolu- 
tionary science. To some the attempt seemed not 
wholly successful. Objections were urged from the 
side of philosophy as well as that of theology : some 
of these objections are discussed by the author in the 
Preface to the second edition. 

But whether it can be said that Di Tennant has 
offered a completely satisfactory account of the matter 
or not, at least he has broken new ground in his two 
books on the subject of Sin and formulated certain 
main principles that seem to have a very firm evidential 
basis and that are supported by strong collateral evi- 
dence 2 , principles that seem likely to afford w r aymarks 

1 The Origin and Propagation of Sin. Ritschl, and Pfleiderer, had 
previously dealt briefly with the problem of Sin on somewhat similar 
lines. 

2 Especially the critical investigation of the origin and growth of 
the Fall-Doctrines. See The Sources of the doctrines of the Fall and 
Original Sin. F. R. Tennant. 



The Theory of Tennant 63 

and guide-posts to set the feet of others on the high- 
way that leads to the city of truth. The first book is 
so well known that it is unnecessary to follow out the 
line of argument : it will suffice to give tw^o quotations 
which summarise the conclusions to which the author 
is led. 

" Morality consists in the formation of the non- 
moral material of nature into character ; in subjecting 
' the seething and tumultuous life of natural tendency, 
of appetite and passion, affection and desire ' to the 
moulding influence of reflective purpose. Here, and 
not in any universal and hereditarily transmitted dis- 
turbance of man's nature, is to be found the occasion 
or source of universal sinfulness. It is simply the 
general failure to effect on all occasions the moralisa- 
tion of inevitable impulses and to choose the end of 
higher worth rather than that which, of lower value, 
appeals with the more clamorous intensity. And if 
goodness consists essentially in this steady moralisation 
of the raw material of morality (i.e. as the note ex- 
plains, what is supplied both by sensibility and reason), 
its opposite, sin, cannot consist in material awaiting 
moralisation, but in the will's failure completely to 
moralise it 1 ." And again, " The solution which has 
been suggested does not secure consistency at the price 
of surrendering any of the truths to be explained. The 
possibility of sin, the instruments of sin, and the 
temptations to sin, are derived partly from our common 
1 Op. cit. pp. 109—110. 



64 The Theory of Ten mint 

nature : that is the essential truth which Augustin- 
ianism, supplied with deficient science and philosophy, 
misrepresented. The actuality of sin is derived solely 
from the individual will influenced by its social en- 
vironment : that is the truth which Pelagius abstracted 
from its proper relation to the solidarity of mankind 
in the non-moral material of sin. Solidarity and guilt 
each finds its recognition in the theory of sin involved 
in the account of human nature which science has now 
supplied to theology as a basis for its doctrine of Man. 
And the denial of inborn sin by this newer tin 
in the sense in which those words are properly taken, 
is accompanied with a strong insistence on man'fl need 
of grace 1 ." 

Sin then is failure, but it ifl u$ failure. An 

individual fails to act up to the best that he knows, 
and by tailing sins. If he had not known, his failure 
would not have been sin. " I had not known sin but 
by the Law." 

To many the representation of sin as, at any rate 
primitively, a negative thing has raised grave doubts as 
to whether Dr Tennant has really reached the bottom of 
the question 2 ; and the very able discussion of this ob- 
jection in the Preface to the second edition, though, as 

1 Op. cit. p. 120. 

- In his new book, The Concept of Sin, Dr Tennant develops 
in detail a theory of sin which approximates more closely to that 
outlined in the following pages, and which avoids the stress laid upon 
the negative aspect in his earlier book. The theory is summed up in 
the definition he gives on p. 245. 



Objections to Tennant's Theory 65 

far as it goes, satisfying to the reason, somehow fails to 
secure conviction. That the objection has less real 
force when one probes deeper, carrying Dr Tennant' s 
thought further along the lines on which we have been 
conducting our investigations, is one of the tasks that 
I have set myself to try to demonstrate. Another 
question, raised by Mr Gayford in the Journal of 
Theological Studies, April 1903, to which in my opinion 
Dr Tennant does not do full justice 1 , will also come into 
prominence, and I hope find some answer, in our dis- 
cussion. It is quoted by Dr Tennant thus : " Granted 
that the propensities which constitute the fomes pec- 
cati come to us from our animal ancestry, and are in 
themselves non-moral, the last step in the evidence 
should tell us what attitude the will itself at its first 
appearance is seen to adopt towards these propensities. 
Is it neutral ? Does it incline towards the ' higher Law ' 
which is just beginning to dawn upon the conscious- 
ness ? Or is it found from the first in sympathy and 
alliance with the impulses which it ought to curb ? 
This goes really to the root of the whole matter : and 
to most thinkers, not only the theologians, but also the 
philosophers, the phenomena have seemed to point to 
the last of these alternatives. It is this aspect of the ques- 
tion, the fundamental aspect, which Mr Tennant really 
evades. He assumes without proof that the will from 
the first has been neutral as towards the lower impulses." 

1 See, however, The Concept of Sin, pp. 140 seqq. 
M. 5 



66 Progress 

We have seen that the destiny of the animal as a 
materia) entity is controlled by two opposing pro- 
cesses, the physical and the vital ; the one tending to 
the degradation of energy, that katabolic process that 
is always ultimately victorious in the individual ; the 
other opposing this degradation, the vital impulse or 
anabolic process which emerges victorious in the race 
though not in the individual. We have seen too that 
the vital impulse is a progressive thing. A kind of 
dead anabolism may persist for a time in an organism 
that has reached equilibrium, but the Damoclean sword 
hangs suspended : a change in the environment means 
destruction as surely as the severing of the hair that 
kept the sword in equilibrium meant death to the 
feaster beneath. 

" Au banquet de la vie, infortunc convive 
J'apparus un jour, el jc incurs l ." 

Once lose touch w 7 ith the progressiveness of life, and 
the living force that conditions all progress is gone ; 
the race is bound in the long run to be swept away 
in the stream of katabolic change. Irresistible, hope- 
less is the doom. 

" La vie est vaine : 
Un peu d'amour, 
Un peu de haine, 
Et puis — Bon jour. 

La vie est breve : 

Un peu d'espoir, 

Un peu de reve, 

Et puis — Bon soir -V 

1 Nicolas Gilbert. ■ Leon Montenaken. 



Knoiuledge and Ideals 67 

Life is reduced to a riddle without an answer ; a 
cycle of physical passion, birth, meaningless aspirations 
and gropings, death, till at length the semblance of life 
ceases to trouble the smooth flow of the cosmic tide. 

The animal does not know this : only the conscious 
reflective being can perceive any difference between 
the back-waters and the main stream of the evolu- 
tionary flow. But the important point for us is that 
we men are conscious reflective beings, and that we can 
perceive a difference between the back-waters and the 
main stream, even if we have never heard of evolution. 
Every man knows that certain things, which we term 
bad, check and hamper, even destroy, his higher facul- 
ties, and impair his powers of work, whatever that 
work may be : especially does he know it if his work 
be creative. In the long run sensualism kills the 
power of doing great creative work. Every man 
knows that some things make for progress, others for 
failure. Every man knows that he is higher in the 
scale of animate beings than a dog. Every man, in 
his half-conscious homage to what is first-rate, in his 
admiration for the doer of work that is first-rate, gives 
tacit recognition to an ideal ; and the nature of an 
ideal is to draw men towards it, itself ever receding. 
It is like the rainbow, at whose foot lies buried the 
golden key of happiness and knowledge, which no child 
even has reached except in dreams, which yet begets a 
sense of need and longing that draws the adventurer 

5—2 



68 Ideals and Sin 

on, till he at least learns and suffers all that becomes 
a man : and at the last perhaps his quest is crowned 
with a vision, which satisfies his soul, as Galahad's 
quest was crowned and his soul satisfied with the 
vision of the Sane Greal. It is through ideals that 
men progress — even though the ideal may only be a 
better-chipped arrow-head. 

The ideal is the manifestation, or rather the con- 
scious recognition, of the vital impulse which has con- 
ditioned all the progress of the unconscious beings, and 
still conditions the progress of conscious man. Only 
by obeying the impulse can man rise higher. He is 
not freed from the strife : he is still on the upward 
road, he is still subject to the laws of matter and so 
destined to physical death. If he sets himself against 
the impulse — and he can do this, for in the inturning of 
the consciousness on itself a larger measure of indeter- 
mination has been introduced into his being than was 
ever found before, since inturning of the consciousness 
means self-consciousness, and self-consciousness means 
consciousness of volition, of power, and of choice — if 
he sets himself against the impulse, he is voluntarily 
opposing the only thing in nature that is capable of 
progress, he is enlisting his will on the side of the 
downward forces that rule matter ; it is not too much 
to say he has set his signature to a treaty with death. 
And this, I believe, is the fundamental essence of sin. 
Let us see to what it leads us. 



Mental and Spiritual Progress 69 

Civilised man, at any rate, is in a large degree 
exempted from the internecine warfare of the lower 
animals. From the material side there are many 
indications that he has reached the highest develop- 
ment that is possible for an animal in the present 
condition of the earth. We saw, in Chapter I. that 
the organism that became man might be said to have 
drifted on to a new threshold where new conditions, 
not of sun and air, but of supersensual influences act 
on it. Henceforward progress must lie in the direction 
of the mind, the will, the soul, if we may be allowed 
to use the familiar term for that part of man's con- 
sciousness which concerns itself with ideals. But 
progress in this region is just as urgently necessary, 
even to the physical being of man, as it was in the 
lower stages of creation. Nations that have ceased to 
progress and nations that have over-specialised alike 
must fall. History shows us only too clearly that to be 
in a state of grace once does not ensure salvation. 
A nation that has been in the main stream can cease 
to be in it. The anthropophagous Islander, the nomad 
Indian, the aesthetic Greek, the sensual Roman, must 
give place to more adaptable, less specialised races 
just as much as the stationary tribe which still 
chips flint. So too with the individual : the man in 
whom there is a divine spark, even if it be only of 
personal ambition, succeeds over the head of the inert 
man. No man is exempt from the strife of minds 



70 Mental and Spiritual Progress 

and wills, even though the grosser strife of physical 
adaptation is largely absent. The lower, equilibrated, 
effortless race may exist on sufferance ; the lower, 
equilibrated, effortless individual may exist on charity, 
or on that same larger charity, sufferance ; but neither 
the race nor the individual will do anything in the 
world, unless by some means the vital impulse is once 
more set free in their life. What are all our social 
improvements, our rescue work, all our efforts to teach 
trades and husbandly to nomad pariah tribes, but 
attempts to instil this impulse, or rather, to give it free 
play, by what name so ever we may choose to call the 
particular scheme in which we are interested ! We say 
we must give a man self-respect, we must make his life 
worth living ; or, we must try to raise this or that tribe 
from its low level of Bavagery by Bhowing the ad- 
vantages of a higher kind of life. And when we have 
reached this stage in our thought, we are surely on the 
border line of the spiritual. The centre of conflict has 
moved from the plane of physical evolution to that of 
the mind and the will, but there is still the same need 
of a progressive impulse if ultimate destruction is to be 
avoided. The difference lies in this, that there is a 
more or less conscious realisation of an ideal, a half- 
understood understanding that life has a purpose, is not 
a mere shadow-play enacted for the amusement of the 
gods, with Chance as Choragos, as Lucian wrote. And 
with this realisation comes a sense of the urgency of 



Primitive Belief 71 

co-operation, a recognition that man can and must 
turn his will towards the same goal : that he can and 
must voluntarily make progress more rapid. 

In other words, the tribe or race begins to entertain 
a belief in a God, who made the world for some end, 
even if that end was merely his own whim ; and so it 
becomes incumbent on men to serve him, or at least to 
propitiate him ; and this can only be accomplished by 
doing what he wants. I was informed by a great tra- 
veller who has done much scientific work in the islands 
of the Pacific and of the Indian Ocean, that he had 
never come across a tribe which did not entertain a 
belief in some Big God or Great Spirit who made the 
whole world, even though they rarely worshipped Him, 
because He seemed so far away, and especially because 
He was the God of other tribes as well, while their own 
gods were very near and wanted constant attention, 
and moreover were more likely to help them in war. 
This of course confuses the issue, but in our recon- 
struction of the main line of advance I think we shall 
not be very far wrong if, neglecting the by-paths, we 
assume that the tribal God was identified with the 
Great Spirit who created the world, as was undoubtedly 
the case with the Hebrew people. 

Thus with the higher development comes a clearer 
view of the whole trend of human life, or at least of 
the life of that particular nation or tribe : the God 
made the world in general, and chose that tribe in 



72 The Belief of the Jews 

particular. If the members of that tribe pleased him 
they would have a very happy life somewhere ; if they 
did not, he would destroy them. That is to say, an 
ideal of pleasing the tribal God became the chief 
mode of expression of the vital impulse. And at this 
stage progress ceased for many nations. But it is 
a noteworthy thing that among the Jews there was 
no clear hope — at first no hope at all — of personal 
reward or punishment in a future life ; while yet there 
grew up a belief that their God was the (iod of the 
whole world, and an intensely real trust that the 
behaviour of the nation, and of each individual com- 
posing it, was of vital importance to the plan of God 
for the future. In other words, without any hope of 
personal salvation, the Jew recognised that God had 
a great plan for the Jewish nation, and not for it 
alone but for the whole world, in the execution of 
which he needed the co-operation of each individual. 
Failure to work with God in this matter was called 
sin. I think I am justified in Baying that even the 
sin of the individual was looked upon as a disgrace to 
the nation, and that hence arose the stringent code 
that differentiated the Jewish nation so markedly from 
the nations around. Very soon came a dim belief in 
a future life with God for the Jews and for all the 
nations of the earth — a belief growing ever brighter. 

Here then the conscious participation of the 



Unity in the Cosmos 73 

individual in a world-plan has emerged : a belief that 
the world is tending God-ward, and that man can and 
must help it forward. Clearly the Jewish race was 
in the main stream of progress. 

But it is only recently that men have come to the 
least understanding of the unity that underlies the 
whole world-development. For many ages the con- 
ception of that completeness was marred by a belief 
in discontinuities. The special days of creation — the 
creation of perfect man — the dual lordship of God 
and Satan — the ruin of man by the fall — the slow and 
partial recovery — all these introduced discords that 
made the world very hard to understand. And so 
there arose harsh controversies over irreconcilable 
systems of explanation. Belief and doubt were firmly 
wedded in the minds of thoughtful men, and their 
offspring was a crop of those strange anomalies we call 
theodicies. 

Even now, many fail to grasp the completeness of 
the unity. This I believe lies at the root of Mr 
Gayford's objection to Dr Tennant's theory, mentioned 
above. He still wants to find a discontinuity between 
the propensities of the self-conscious animal, the fomes 
peccati, and its will ; w^hereas to my thinking there 
can be no doubt that the will is simply the result of 
the in-turning on itself of the consciousness or vital 
impulse, that has underlain all progress throughout, 



74 Experience 

engendering self-consciousness — that it is, so to speak, 
continuous with the propensities — and so the animal, 
now able to realise itself as a fashioner of tools, bends its 
powers voluntarily to the work ; and, learning by ex- 
perience that progress is the condition of life, constantly 
brings its will to bear on new things for the improve- 
ment of its lot. In other words, now that ice arc dealing 
with a self-conscious being, it is experience which 
teaches that to bend the will towards progress is right, 
while to bend it towards retrogression, or to leave it 
dormant, is wrong because it entails destruction. Not 
till long after does the dimmest idea arise in the mind 
that all men are developing towards a definite end ; 
one cannot for a moment imagine that the earliest sins 
were committed in conscious opposition to a higher 
will : only, there was a realisation of the need to 
go forwards, and anything that hindered that be- 
came sin. 

So far we have considered the race rather than the 
individual, though in the last paragraph we have 
indicated what we believe to be the key to the mystery 
of individual sin. 

The race must fail if the vital impulse is disre- 
garded: equilibrium, passivity, unprogressiveness, mean 
death. This for the unconscious animate world. For 
man the development is on a higher plane, in the 
domain of thought and will and spirit. But here too, 
in the first two at any rate, absence of progress, 



The Recognition of Teleology 75 

equilibrium, means physical death to the race. Only, 
since the progress is in the domain of the mind and 
will, it is conscious. There must be the conscious 
dedication of the nation to progress through its com- 
ponent individuals, if it is not to fail. 

Last of all comes the realisation that the whole 
world is animated by that same spirit of unrest, which 
urges it upward towards one goal — the likening of the 
spirit to one Spirit who is above all and through all and 
in all, in perfect freedom and perfect service ; not a 
struggle between evil matter and good spirit, but the 
effort of spirit to create itself in winning free from the 
determinate katabolism from which it emerges, grow- 
ing always in indetermination as it approaches nearer 
and nearer to the perfect freedom of the God-spirit. 
And the conscious checking of this creative growth by 
actions which experience has shown to be antagonistic 
to it, is, in my belief, the real essence of sin. 

Thus sin, though negative in origin, though failure 
in one sense, is yet most truly positive in that it is 
the voluntary checking of the great process for the 
sake of which everything exists, by individual beings 
who have at any rate some glimpse of the nature of 
that process. 

For self-consciousness is essentially an individual 
thing. It is not so much that the race becomes 
conscious of itself as a race, as that each individual 
comes to be conscious of himself as a person and as 
an originating cause of phenomena. He recognises 



76 The Recognition of Teleology 

in himself the existence of a force which urges him 
to do certain things and to abstain from doing other 
things, finding by experience that by following these 
inward promptings he gains greater self-realisation, 
becomes more master of his fate, while their rejection 
leads to deterioration. For it is quite certain that 
one of the first properties of self-consciousness is the 
ability to recognise the trend of development, if not 
always a man's own, at any rate that of his neighbour. 
Every man recognises the existence of an upward and 
a downward movement in others ; every man really 
gives tacit acceptance to the fact that his own life is 
tending definitely some whither, towards some goal, as 
he makes a decision to do or not to do this or that. In 
Dr Tennant's phrase, as he makes a derision he tacitly 
accepts the existence of the " raw material of morality M 
in himself, and moralises or fails to moralise it. And 
if we push the idea of morality back we can see in it 
a prompting of great significance to the race. Those 
very writers who claim that ethics is simply a com- 
munal necessity, arising automatically out of the 
conditions of mutual dependence in a colony, are 
really arguing the same thing. Ethics forms the 
necessary basis of further progress. It does certainly 
arise by the interplay of interests in a community ; 
the community being a semi-permanent entity, always 
perfecting the machinery of its common life : an entity 
whose component parts work and pass. As the flame 
of a candle remains while the particles which give 



The Community and the Individual 77 

it being change each moment, so it is with the com- 
munity ; and so too is it with each individual : his body 
remains while the molecules which are its physical 
basis change. But we must not forget that the simile 
is equally true of the vital impulse which underlies it 
all — and falls equally short of the truth. 

The flame is a flame and remains unchanged. But 
the community of to-morrow is not the community of 
to-day : it is something more. The man of to-morrow 
is not the man of to-day : he is something more. The 
community has won victories over matter — it has 
gained in indetermination, and this just because the 
man has gained in indetermination. And these are 
but more instances of the great truth that the vital 
impulse, in whatsoever material body it may be clothed, 
is always achieving greater freedom. When we say 
that ethics necessarily arises with community life, we 
are accepting the fact that the community must im- 
prove ; and by defining " improvement " in ethical 
terms we are conceding that the evolution which led 
up to man is still working on man in a sphere other 
than the corporeal. Moral instead of physical adapta- 
tion becomes the condition of progress 1 . 

1 That there is some measure of independence between the moral 
and spiritual development is quite true : Wallace draws attention to 
this, and gives striking instances, in his book on the Malay Archi- 
pelago. But all it goes to show is that the two indicate different 
stages of evolution, just as the physical and moral stages of progress 
do — stages which yet interpenetrate, and which must both bear their 
part in the genesis of the perfect man. 



78 The Community and the Individual 

The possibility of ethical development rests on 
the self-consciousness of the individual : therefore the 
future of the race depends wholly on the individual. 

It is this that, from the evolutionary standpoint, 
makes what we call sin evil. Man uses the freedom 
which he has gained to check the growth of freedom 
of the spirit and so to hinder the eternal Process that 
is to bring into being a spirit that is perfectly free. 
The greatness of his sin is measured by his realisation 
of the end of life and the part his will plays in this 
rejection. 

We have traced our idea of the nature of sin and 
have seen its effect on the race. So long as the vital 
impulse is in any degree determined or hampered 
from without, so long, that is, as katabolism is in any 
degree victorious, so long, it seems, is the race un- 
finished, so long is there still development to come. 
Aided by the will of man progress is far more rapid. 
Compared with the length of time since life began on 
the globe, man has existed but a few moments; and yet 
the progress of civilisation and invention and thought 
shows a vast advance in his indetermination. The 
spirit is still fettered by matter, but it is steadily 
emerging into a fuller heritage. 

Undoubtedly the most salient feature of this 
emergence is the creation of fuller personality. And 
in personality rests the great argument for belief in 
the relation of man to God, and in immortality. From 



Personality 79 

the purely natural standpoint I do not see that we can 
advance farther than a realisation that the progress of 
the race depends largely, if not wholly, on the will of 
the individuals composing it, once self-consciousness 
has emerged, and that sin is the conscious setting of 
the will of the individual to oppose this progress. 
When personality appears, any further interpretation of 
the Universe must be sought in the realm of personality. 
In Chapter I we found reason to look on each stage 
of development as, in a sense, an end in itself, while 
yet the existence of the unrest, the vital impulse, 
indicated a kind of teleology, in that something was 
struggling to emerge into what we must call, for want 
of a better term, self-expression. As soon as per- 
sonality appears we at once find a meaning for this. 
Each person is an end in himself : he is conscious of 
it ; and it is this consciousness that makes him seek 
to know what this " end " may be. And, as we have 
seen, he gradually comes to look on himself as a worker, 
labouring at a task that God has set to all men. If he 
does his work ill he will be annihilated, or become 
en wrapt in the vague nothingness of Sheol — if we may 
take the Jewish mode of expression as representing a 
definite stage on the direct road of progress. If he 
does well God will be pleased with him. He may not 
be happy or fortunate in this life, and he has no hope 
of another, but somehow^ God's approval ranks higher 
than personal gain. It is only later that the future 
becomes more clear to him, and he realises that 



80 Immortality 

personality is an end in itself, and can never be 
absorbed again into the formless stream of things. 
When he comes to understand this he is assured of 
immortality. He, his own self, will be rewarded for 
his faithful work by a life nearer to God, with a fuller 
understanding of w r hat life means : seeing clearly what 
was the work he helped in ; perhaps working with 
clearer light for other ends, at any rate happy in union 
with God. True, in some races this appreciation of 
the eternal nature of personality was lost, as we have 
seen, owing to an erroneous philosophy which looked 
on the world forces as in themselves evil. But if, as 
is almost universally conceded by those unbiassed by 
any religious tenets, Christianity represents the highest 
stage of religion that has yet appeared in the world, 
this is of little moment to our argument : we have 
merely another instance of a back-water in the stream 
of progress. 

Let us now summarise the thought of this chapter. 

Objections have been raised against Dr Tennant's 
view of the origin of sin on the ground that to define 
sin in terms of failure is to make it negative, and so 
to minimise it ; and also that, even granting that the 
fomes peccati comes to us from our animal ancestry 
and so is non-moral, yet the writer evades the 
fundamental aspect of the question when he assumes 
that the will is neutral. Before considering these 
objections we argued that life in which the vital 
impulse is dormant is meaningless and transient. And 



Summary 81 

man, since he is a conscious being, is able to know this, 
and does in fact know it : his very yearning after an 
ideal is evidence that he knows that the stream of life 
is moving towards a goal. If he consciously spurns his 
ideal, he sins, throwing the weight of his personality 
on the side of katabolism, which means death. For 
the struggle is not yet over : it is now on a higher 
plane ; but the mind and will and spirit, as they 
develop, are still dependent on matter, and subject to 
the old struggle with the cosmic forces of decay. We 
still have to do all we can to aid the anabolic effort 
when it seems in danger of extinction. 

The recognition of the existence of a goal towards 
which the race was tending emerged, at any rate with 
the Jews, who seem to have been on the direct line of 
progress, before the belief that personality was in- 
destructible, and sin meant to the Jew the failure of 
a man to do his part in the furtherance of the race 
by personal holiness. Thus consciousness of partici- 
pation in a world-plan led to a clearly-reasoned idea 
of the nature of sin. Now, however, thanks to a clear 
idea of the uniformity and continuity of the evo- 
lutionary process, we can see the completeness and 
unity of this world-plan, and with this conception of 
unity and continuity the difficulty about the bias of 
the will disappears : the emergence of will is due to 
an in-turning of the consciousness on itself, whose 
immediate purpose is the securing of greater control 

m. 6 



82 Summary 

over matter : it is only by experience that the con- 
scious being learns that some applications of the will 
are right and others wrong, according as they tend 
towards improvement or the opposite ; and sin is 
primarily the misuse of this experience. Thus 
although sin is negative in the sense that it is a 
" failure to moralise the raw material of morality," 
yet it is positive in that this failure is due to the 
conscious misuse of experience. 

Turning then to the individual we indicated briefly 
why we must assume that ethics, though a product 
of community life, is yet dependent wholly on the 
individuals of the community, resting on their self- 
consciousness. And the salient feature of the ethical 
life is the development of personality. In personality 
the stake of the individual in the development of the 
race must be sought. We cannot stay to discuss the 
reasons for the belief that personality is immortal : for 
that, reference must be made to some of the many works 
which deal with personality from the philosophical and 
religious sides 1 . For our purpose it is enough if we 
accept the importance that is generally attached to it, 
without considering the arguments upon which that 
importance is based. 

1 E.g. von Hiigel's Eternal Life contains much valuable and 
suggestive matter, and an excellent bibliography Hart's The 
Philosophical treatment of Divine Personality from Spinoza to Lotze 
is a useful summary. 



CHAPTER V 

A SUMMARY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT ON 
THE ATONEMENT 

Step by step we have endeavoured to make a survey 
of a road that stretches away towards the illimitable 
past. Stretching away into the illimitable future is 
another road, tentatively surveyed by countless genera- 
tions of thinkers. But this road also stretches back- 
wards into the past. If the results of the different 
surveys are correct, these two must surely be found to 
be one and the same. We must then compare the 
surveys and by comparison try if we can eliminate the 
errors and see how the two really represent one and the 
same road. This is our problem. 

As each generation has to serve as a living link 
between the has-lived and the yet-to-live, to be at once 
an end and a new beginning, the last term of a series 
and the first term of another series, so the road that 
life traverses must be one. Theologians believe that it 
leads from one beginning to one goal ; scientists teach 
that the past stages are clearly marked and traceable. 

6—2 



84 The Biological Survey 

We must then examine our maps to see how we may 
reconcile such discrepancies as appear. 

The stages along the road mapped out in. our bio- 
logical survey run thus. 

(1) There is complete continuity between the un- 
conscious and conscious animal : each develops his 
characters under the stimulus of environment, and 
certain of the conscious animal's characters seem to 
demand a spiritual environment. Thus we are led to 
postulate a God, (2) Progress is simply response to 
environment, a response aiming at equilibrium, yet 
urged by a " divine discontent M always to seek a 
completer equilibrium that embraces more condit 
Without this " divine discontent.'" which is the vital 
impulse of M. Bergson, there would not be progress. 
(3) The vital impulse is always striving in antagonism 
to the cosmic process of dissipation, and achieves a 
greater and greater degree of freedom. (4) The animal 
having become in some measure master of its fate, the 
vital impulse, in-turning on itself, gives origin to self- 
consciousness. (5) With self-consciousness comes the 
possibility of volition, tending towards progress or the 
reverse, together with the power to recognise the 
existence of a trend in men : to believe in some rude 
form of teleology, at least in a destiny for man. Far 
later comes the idea of one single purpose underlying 
the whole world : agreement as to that purpose still 
lies in the womb of Time. (6) The interaction of 



Changing Theories 85 

volition and the rudiments of the idea of purpose in 
the world-plan produces the possibility of sin. Sin is 
the expression of a clashing between the two. 

We dare not claim that our reasoning is flawless, 
though up to this point it has dealt, apparently, with 
things far less high than the great central dogma of the 
Christian faith, the Incarnation and Atonement. But to 
the Christian the whole matter is of more import than 
anything else in his life ; and any attempt to present a 
theory which indicates that underneath the whole of 
life lies a great Plan, pre-ordained, continuous in action, 
certain in fulfilment, which yet leaves man a full 
measure of freedom — freedom always " increasing unto 
the perfect day " — seems worth while, in the hope that 
it may offer some clue to a few who are groping in the 
half-dark. The difficulties of one generation are not 
those of another ; the theories of one generation will 
not be those of another. But any train of thought 
which helps one man of any age and nation, may often 
help others of his fellow-gropers. Much of it is for the 
time only, and must pass, but the grains of truth will 
be sifted out and added to the world's store. The 
winnowing of time has scattered much chaff from the 
thoughts of men on the Atonement, as we shall see ; 
but each new theory contributed a few grains to the 
residuum of truth. It is in the hope that there may 
be something of use to a few at the present day, and 



86 Irenaeus 

in the belief that there^may be found a few good grains 
in the winnowing, that we dare to add our small 
harvest to the common garner. 

We must next, then, to return to our metaphor, 
examine the maps of the theologians, which are many 
and various. We shall do no more than indicate the 
directions from which the problem of the relation 
between the Perfect God and sinful man has been 
attacked, and the main conclusions arrived at, in the 
briefest manner possible, in order that, examining the 
residuum of truth, we may appreciate what has stood, 
or seems likely to stand, the test of time, and so con- 
struct from this a map that represents the results of 
the theological survey. 

An admirable account of the general development 
of thought on the Incarnation and Atonement is to be 
found in Oxenham's Catholic Doctrine of the Atone- 
merit 1 : the brief summary that follows is derived from 
that. 

A threefold division of the causes or motives of the 
Incarnation is usually made by theologians : the mani- 
festation of the Glory of God ; the benefit of man by 
redemption and sanctification, by teaching, and by 
example ; and the triumph over Satan (p. 97). 

Of the ante-Nicene Fathers only Irenaeus and 
Origen propound a definite theory. Irenaeus con- 
sidered that the Incarnation was necessary in order 

1 The references are to the third edition, 1881. 



Origen 87 

that perfect obedience might be substituted for dis- 
obedience ; but even so a sacrifice had to be paid to 
Satan, and the death of the Redeemer was the only 
means of Redemption. How the death on the Cross 
brought about Redemption is not clearly explained 
(pp. 130 seqq.). 

Origen made this clear : the Devil had obtained 
rights over man, which had to be satisfied. He de- 
ceived himself, " not perceiving that the human race 
was to be still more delivered by His (Christ's) death 
than it had been by His teaching and miracles." Satan 
thought to obtain Christ's soul, and so to secure 
dominion over man for ever. How Satan came to 
deceive himself is left unexplained, or rather, it is 
suggested that he was deceived by God. 

Though Origen did not teach the doctrine of 
vicarious sacrifice, at any rate in its full sense, he yet 
considered that a sacrifice was necessary as the means 
of man's reformation, to bring him once more within 
the embrace of the love of God (pp. 136 seqq.). 

Thus in the ante-Nicene Fathers there is no ex- 
planation of Redemption ; the point brought out clearly 
is that Christ's sufferings were undergone virep not 
dvrl man. 

In the later Fathers, and especially the Greek, 
more stress was laid on the Incarnation than on the 
Atonement. There is no indication of belief that a 
change in the Father's Will towards man was brought 



88 Ei*igena 

about by the Incarnation ; rather, there is clear fore- 
shadowing of the Scotist view that the Incarnation 
was part of the eternal purpose of God. They follow 
Origen in the strange view of the deception of Satan 
by God. All through these early writers runs the semi- 
Gnostic idea of the battle between God and a Power of 
evil who almost represents the Demi-urge. The world 
ruled by Satan is decidedly an evil place. 

With Erigena we reach the threshold of the later 
developments of thought. He taught that man fell 
in himself, before the Devil's temptation, and before he 
attained a full realisation of the Peace of God. " Datur 
intelligi quod homo prius in se ipso lapsus est quam 
a diabolo tentaretur, non enim credibile est eundem 
hominem et in contemplatione aeternae pacis stetisse, 
et, suadente femina, serpentis veneno corrupta, cor- 
ruisse " (de Divisione Naturarum, cap. iv, quoted by 
Oxenham). This fall resulted in the division of sexes, 
and gave opportunity to Satan to obtain control over 
man. In the Incarnation God united all outward 
phenomena to their I8ecu, or archetypes, which existed 
in Himself, and so made Himself apprehensible to men 
and angels alike. This Incarnation must have taken 
place in any case, since it was part of the Eternal Plan 
of God to bring men into relation with Himself. But 
man had sinned in the body, and by the death of the 
body the possibility of sin is done away. Thus death 
necessarily followed upon sin. Yet the soul was still 






Anselm 89 

separated from God by sin. The graciousness of God 
was however willing to accept the death of Christ as a 
means of reconciliation (pp. 170 seqq.). 

Anselm's writings mark the beginning of a new age ; 
the age of the Schoolmen. He repudiates the idea of 
a debt paid to Satan, on the ground that it contradicts 
either the omnipotence or the goodness of God. His 
work is governed rather by the forensic idea of a debt 
incurred by sin and the need of payment of a legal 
equivalent to divine justice. The honour of God has 
been impugned and robbed ; the debt is so great that 
none but God can pay it, for man already owes all that 
he is to God. Free forgiveness is impossible, for the 
order of God's Kingdom is marred. Christ died volun- 
tarily, not of debt, and so dying was justly able to 
claim as recompense from the Father the salvation of 
man. Justice and Mercy alike are satisfied, for the 
payment far exceeds the debt, and the Father freely 
accepts Christ's death, offered by man instead of his 
own (pp. 180 seqq.). 

The rejection of the Devil's claim, which is so 
characteristic of Anselm's theory, is generally accepted 
by the rest of the Schoolmen, but his contention that 
the death of Christ constituted the only possible means 
of redemption is rejected, though, as we shall see, it 
came into prominence again during the period of the 
Reformation. 

Henceforward until the Reformation, and really 



90 Aquinas and Duns Scotus 

afterwards down to the present day, there are two 
main branches, headed respectively by Aquinas and 
Duns Scotus. 

Briefly, the two schools resemble each other in 
rejecting the necessity of the Passion : God " was not 
in the position of a civil ruler who cannot lawfully 
remit the "penalty of offences committed... against the 
commonweal " : but the Passion was the most suitable 
method of bringing home to man the greatness of 
his sin. It is not on the measure of the sacrifice, but 
on the measure of God's acceptance, that reconciliation 
depends. Christ's death brings merit to us, satis- 
faction to God ; it is the highest type of the highest 
form of worship, sacrifice, and it redeems us from the 
bondage and punishment of sin. But according to the 
Thomists the Incarnation was solely conditioned and 
made necessary by man's fall ; according to the Scotists 
it was part of the originally predestined scheme before 
the fall. The latter believed that if man had not 
fallen Christ would still have come as man, to be our 
model and the head of the mystical body symbolised 
in the human race (pp. 204 seqq.). This last view is 
certainly foreshadowed in the writings of the Fathers 
and in Erigena. 

We now reach the period of the Reformation, and 
here a brief reference to the doctrine of Original Sin 
becomes necessary. 

The Catholic doctrine of Original Sin was this : 



Original Sin 91 

Man was created with perfect nature, in which lay 
the power of freedom ; and super-added originalis 
justitia united him in communion with his Maker. 
By the fall this last supernatural grace was lost, and 
his nature was hence marred, since, uncontrolled by 
grace, freedom was sure to lead to sin in the individual. 
This grace it is that is restored by justification and 
sanctification 1 , and he is able by good works — for his 
freedom was not destroyed by sin — to recover his own 
fallen nature. " Original sin " is thus the loss of 
supernatural grace, not an inherited taint in man's 
nature. 

Luther denied the originalis justitia, holding that 
man's original perfection was part of his nature, im- 
planted by God, the capabilities and the acts of 
virtue being alike implanted. Hence there was no 
real freedom. By the fall, then, man lost all touch 
with God, all power of doing anything good at all ; 
and more, he not only became sinful, he became sin ; 
essentially identified with evil and so abhorrent to 
God (pp. 224 seqq.). Hence everything he does is 
mortal sin, and all his apparent virtues are vices 
(Melanchthon). 

Original sin has thus a far more all-embracing 
nature in the system of the Reformers than in that 

1 Of course, the death of Christ atoned for actual sin as well as 
original sin. See the discussion in the preface to the 2nd edition of 
Oxenham's book. 



92 Lutlier and Calvin 

of their opponents. With Luther and his followers 
justification becomes in consequence acquittal from 
penalties. Christ's sufferings were accepted instead 
of ours, as a propitiation to an angry God. Christ 
suffered vicarious punishment, and in His Passion 
actually endured the pains of Hell. Man's acceptance 
of Christ is thus based on terror 1 , and not on love : his 
desire is to escape Hell at any price and he can only 
do so by accepting Christ. 

Calvin in some directions pushed this doctrine 
further. He believed in absolute predestination, and 
hence implied that God is the author of sin— a horrible 
tenet, defended by Reza and Zwingli on the ground 
that God is above law. It follows that Christ only 
died for the sake of a few elect, and the elect are 
subjectively conscious of salvation. Finally. Grotius 
actually states his belief in the literal imputation of 
our sins to Christ, and of His holiness to us : with him 
the doctrine of vicarious obedience reaches its highest 
development. 

The general tendency of the Reformers was therefore 

to insist on the Ansehnian view of Christ's death as the 

only possible means of reconciliation, and to this tin 

added the doctrine of substitution of Christ's perfectness 

and obedience for man's perfectness and obedience lost 

1 This was taught by Edwards as the official Calvinistic doctrine 
as late as the last quarter of the 18th century, whose views, says 
McLeod Campbell, are still held among many Scottish Presbyterian ^. 
See McLeod Campbell, Nature of Atonement, chh. in, iv, v. 



Later Reformers 93 

the Fall. Many of them dwelt on the idea of the 
wrathful God who hated sinfulness and required pro- 
pitiation, and so in a measure the idea of the Divine 
Fatherhood was relegated to the background. God 
became for them, as Matthew Arnold expresses it, 
" a magnified and non-natural man in the next street " 
" whose proceedings Calvinism intimately knew and 
could give account of 1 ." There were many reactions 
against one point and another, but on the whole the 
official views were on the lines we have briefly 
sketched 2 . 

During the next century and a half there was com- 
paratively little original thought or controversy on the 
subject of the Atonement. Different points are thrown 
into prominence by different writers, but on the whole 
there is still the same division into two parties, one 
claiming that the death of Christ was the only possible 
means of reconciliation, the other that it was not the 
only possible one, but the one which seems most suitable 
and congruous, and which God chose to accept. These 
last again fall into the two divisions of Thomists and 
Scotists according as they believe that the Incarnation 
was solely conditioned by the Fall, or was part of the 
original plan of God, the Atonement being only in- 
cidental on the Fall. 

Turning now to modern days we must indicate very 

1 St Paul and Protestantism, pp. 13, 6. 

2 See Oxenham. op. tit. ch. v. 



94 Wilberforce 

briefly the direction in which thought seems to be 
tending. As we shall see, the main characteristic on 
the theological side is the attempt to escape from the 
Substitution Theory which characterised the thought of 
the Reformers 1 . 

Wilberforce 2 , while insisting strongly on the media- 
torial aspect of Christ's work, and in many ways imbued 
with the thought of the Reformers, is yet not prepared 
to pronounce on the necessity of Christ's death as the 
only possible means of atonement, but he insists 
strongly on its congruity. God is a loving Father, 
but sin is utterly abhorrent to His perfection : there- 
fore reconciliation is needed. What atonement could 
be so fitting as that made by Christ, Who, Incarnate as 
Head of the race, is able to speak and act in the name 
of the whole race, and can suffer the full expiation of sin 
and render perfect obedience in the name of the race ? 
Wilberforce insists strongly on the penonoJ nature of 
Christ as Man and God, and on the need of personal 
communion with Christ as the link between manhood 
and Godhead. This need for the conscious voluntary 
acceptance of Christ as representing the ideal of 

1 The important notes on Sin and Justification, and on Vicarious 
Suffering, in Sanday and Headlam's Commentary on the Epistle to the 
Romans, pp. 143 seqq., and pp. 91 seqq., should be mentioned here, 
though a consideration of them is not necessary for the argument of 
the present chapter. 

2 The Doctrine of the Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in its 
relation to Mankind and to the Church, by R. I. Wilberforce, Arch- 
deacon of the East Riding, 1848. 



Dale 95 

humanity, this need for a real and sincere entering into 
Him, by entering into His death to sin, on the part 
of every individual man, in order that the gulf created 
by sin may no longer separate man from God, has come 
very much to the fore in modern days 1 . 

From this time onwards writers on the Atonement 
generally develop their thought along one of two lines, 
basing their argument either on the fact of Personality, 
as foreshadowed by Wilberforce, or on Ethics, as fore- 
shadowed by many of the earlier writers. No doubt 
this is indirectly due to the influence of the renaissance 
of Philosophy, and especially to that of the eighteenth 
century. 

Dale, for example, is at pains to show that " the 
Death of Christ did not merely manifest the infinite 
mercy of God, but really effected Reconciliation between 
God and man." The eternal nature and obligation of 
the Law of Righteousness is argued with great force, 
and the relation of this law to God. The writer sums 
up his view by stating that " God's relation to the law 
is not a relation of subjection but of identity." " In 
God the law is alive ; it reigns on His throne, sways 
His sceptre, is crowned with His glory." He considers 
the ethical nature of punishment, and concludes that 
" whatever moral element there is in punishment itself 
— as punishment — is derived from the person or power 

1 Cf. Du Bose, The Gospel in the Gospels, ch. xm ; also Matthew 
Arnold, St Paul and Protestantism, passim. 



96 Dale 

that inflicts " : it is the moral imperative of the Law of 
Righteousness that brings punishment on the sinner : 
by punishment Righteousness is vindicated. There 
may be subsidiary objects in punishment as punish- 
ment, but this is chief. And the grandeur of the law 
is manifested in the terribleness of the suffering en- 
tailed by sin — the sufferings of Christ. 

Ethical precepts, he says, do not seem to be " self- 
acting " in the same way that natural laws are : it is 
possible to transgress them without immediate penalty : 
in human affairs they require the co-operation of human 
will ; and so also the transcendent law of righteous- 
ness may require the concurrence of the Divine Will, 
and may be superseded by it, if there is adequate 
reason. 

This reason may bo shown in the triumph of 
Righteousness by the voluntary death of Ghrifl 
sin. Christ's relation to the universe is unique ; for 
the universe exists in Him and for Him and through 
Him. Therefore it is congruous, and to our limited 
minds seems necessary, that Christ should suffer for 
our Redemption. For suffering is necessary : not even 
God can release us from the obligation to reverence 
and obey Him : not even He can remit the punishment 
of the breach of this obligation. By submitting to the 
awful isolation that wrung from Him the cry 4 ' Eloi, 
Eloi, lama sabachthani," Christ entered into our real 
relation to God as sinners while yet remaining sinless. 



Essays 97 

In His unique relation to the universe He is able to 
identify Himself with our race and to endure suffering 
for us instead of inflicting it on us. 

It is important to notice that we have here some 
indication of the line which more recent thought has 
followed. Ethics are viewed more in the light of their 
relation to personality than from the abstract or legal 
point of view, although this last is still prominent. 

McLeod Campbell's treatise (which is somewhat 
earlier in date than Dale's) does not call for special 
remark here. Valuable and suggestive though it is, 
its chief interest lies in the fact that it bridges over in 
a great measure the gap between the official " Catholic " 
and " Protestant " interpretations of the central truth 
of Christianity. In one way the author completes the 
central idea of Wilberforce's book, the representative 
nature of the Atonement in the suffering of the Head 
of the Race, by emphasising the confessional aspect 
of Christ's death — the confession of sin by the Race. 

We must also pass over in silence two books of 
essays that are of great interest, Lux Mundi and The 
Atonement in Modern Religious Thought. After cen- 
turies of controversy which necessarily led to a loss of 
the sense of proportion, at the present day a far 
broader and more hospitable mode of thought prevails. 
Thanks largely to the widening influence of the ideas 
introduced by the scientific discoveries of the last half 
of the nineteenth century and the general application 

m. 7 



98 Denney 

of the " Scientific Method," a far greater apprecia- 
tion of the many-sidedness of Truth has grown up. 
And these two volumes of essays reflect the spirit of 
the age. One is written from the Anglo-Catholic 
standpoint ; the contributors to the other represent all 
shades of Christian belief. But in both the univer- 
sality of the Incarnation is the dominant note. There 
is little that is new, but the influence of the best and 
broadest thought of all schools of the past is recognis- 
able, shorn of most of the crudities that disfigured the 
age of controversy. And the same may be said of the 
Introductory Essay in Ottley's Doctrine of the Incarna- 
tion. The Scotist view of the Atonement as part of 
the Incarnation, and not as the only cause of it, 
seems to hold the field with the majority of modern 
writers. 

Mention must be made, however, of two valuable 
books by Dr Denney, The Death of Christ and Thu • I 
ment and the Modern Mind as representing, in a 
modified form, the traditional view of the Reformers. 
The first is mainly exegetical, and forms a most impor- 
tant commentary on the New Testament teaching in 
regard to Atonement, even if one is unable to accept 
the conclusions arrived at in their entirety ; the second 
is an attempt, often beautiful and suggestive, to restate 
the position of the Substitutionist in a way that does 
not repel the modern mind. It hardly offers, nor indeed 
does it profess to offer, a completely logical chain of 



Denney 99 

argument. The grave difficulty of the relation between 
death and sin, for example, is treated more by a series 
of affirmations, supported by appeals to man's intuitive 
feeling of fear in regard to death, than by a frank recog- 
nition of the fact that the fear of death is probably a 
part of the experience of the animals as well as of men, 
and that the two are continuous. Indeed the author 
draws a clear line between the death of animals and of 
men, making them different in kind 1 . It may almost be 
said that these books, stimulating and helpful as they 
are, sometimes serve to bring into prominence the diffi- 
culties of the views advocated by laying stress on the 
points which present the greatest difficulty to the 
modern temper. 

Both uphold very forcibly the Thomist view that 
the Incarnation was solely conditioned by the Fall, 
and the doctrine that Christ's merit was substituted 
for ours in the Atonement. 

Thus Dr Denney says " The Atonement, and the 
priestly or reconciling ministry of Christ, was the end, 
to which the incarnation is relative as the means." 
" One could not go to the New Testament with a more 
misleading schematism in his mind than that which is 
provided by the conception of the incarnation, and its 
relation to the Atonement, to which Westcott's influence 
has given currency in many circles 2 ." 

1 The Atonement and the Modern Mind, pp. 65 ff. ; The Death of 
Christ, pp. 128, 129. 

2 The Death of Christ, p. 211. 

7—2 



100 Denney 

In regard to the doctrine of substitution, the author 
repudiates the purely transactional view, at any rate 
verbally, and accepts identification as a subsequent 
aspect of substitution. 

" Christ is Clod's gift to humanity. He stands in 
the midst of us, the pledge of God's love, accepting our 
responsibilities as God would have them accepted, 
offering to God, under the pressure of the world's sin 
and all its consequences, that perfect recognition of 
God's holiness in so visiting sin which men should have 
offered but could not ; and in so doing He makes 
atonement for us. In doing so, also, He is our sub- 
stitute, not yet our representative. It is not a trans- 
action in business, or in book-keeping, which is complete 
in itself ; in view of the relations of God and man it 
belongs to its very nature to be a moral appeal K n Even 
more strongly he says, " The Apostle (Peter) does not 
raise the question whether it is possible for one to 
assume the responsibilities of others in this way ; he 
assumes (and the assumption, as we shall see, is common 
to all the New Testament writers) that the responsi- 
bilities of sinful men have been taken on Himself by the 
sinless Lamb of God 2 ." The imputation of our sin to 
Christ and of Christ's merit to us is very clearly stated 3 . 
Thus we are certainly right in saying that Dr Dennev 

1 The Atonement and the Modern Mind, pp. 99, 100. 
- Death of Christ, p. 99. 
3 Death of Christ, p. 149. 



Bethune-Bdker 101 

represents the teaching of the Reformers ; and the 
change in mode of expression, though it minimises, does 
not do away with the difficulties of their theology. 
None the less, whether we agree or disagree with 
the presuppositions which tend to colour his thought, 
there is no doubt that for careful exegesis of the passages 
in the New Testament dealing with the Atonement, 
and for sympathetic and reverent insight, Dr Denney's 
work must always stand in the first rank. 

There remain two or three works which call for 
more than passing reference, because they illustrate very 
clearly the tendency mentioned a short while since 
to consider the Atonement from one or other of two 
points of view, the Ethical and the Personal. 

Dr Bethune-Baker's Essay in the volume of Cam- 
bridge Theological Essays shows very clearly that 
Christianity, as a practical religion, is based on a 
theory of life, and such theories are of necessity pri- 
marily ethical. The whole purpose of Christ's life 
was ethical, " to reveal to men the ideal life and so 
to stir in them the will to live that life, and give them 
power to carry out that will." Jesus revealed God to 
man, and revealed man to himself. In doing this He 
revealed the existence of an absolute ethical standard ; 
sin is failure to achieve this standard. The ideal set 
up " makes an imperious demand on conscience, and it 
supplies an adequate motive " in " spiritual union with 
Him energised by love." The doctrine of forgive- 



102 Beihune-Baker 

ness removes the crushing burden imposed by such a 
standard : union with love and self-sacrifice is shown to 
embody the highest ethic. The unity of the whole 
world, seen and unseen, is the true expression of the 
highest principle of life, and that union is made perfect 
by and in love. 

In a tentative note (p. 558) Dr Bethune-Baker 
expresses the difficulty he feels in accepting an 
evolutionary account of sin, as being inconsistent with 
the idea of an absolute ethic. He is unable to reconcile 
it with the doctrine of the Atonement. But it may 
be urged that the origin of the difficulty really lies in 
his statement of the case. Starting with Tennant's 
view of sin as u an anachronism," he regards this as 
making it less sinful : the continuity of development 
seems for him to obscure the issue. But surely, be- 
cause a thing is not wrong at one stage it does not 
follow that it is any the less sinful at another stage. 
Because the child or the savage is " following the law 
of his physical growth and development " it does not 
follow that he is " doing right " when he follows the 
lower impulses, other impulses being present, as Dr 
Bethune-Baker seems to suggest. The criterion is 
whether or no the higher impulses are in any degree 
present ; as soon as they appear at all, failure to obey 
them is positive sin. In other words, sin is, in a large 
measure, subjective, depending upon the ideals of the 
individual. 






Moberly 103 

Although, then, the doctrine of the Atonement is 
only touched upon incidentally in the essay, it shows 
clearly one trend of modern thought — the exaltation 
of an absolute ethical standard, which is yet only 
achievable under the unifying influence of love ; and 
the need of fitting in our doctrine of the Atonement 
with this — as had already been attempted by Dale. 

Turning to the other side we find a striking de- 
velopment of thought on the basis of Personality, 
due no doubt in a great degree to the growth of the 
science of Psychology, and also in part to the in- 
dividualistic tendency of the age that was ushered in 
by the French Revolution. 

Leaving on one side the somewhat extravagant 
views of such writers as Hudson 1 , who would exalt 
personality at the expense of all else, and who are not 
professed theologians, we come to Moberly's Atonement 
and Personality. His whole theory of the Incarnation 
may be summed up in his own phrase as " things 
which were wrought without that they might be 
realised within " (p. 281). Starting with a direct 
denial of Dale's view of punishment as retributive, he 
develops the view that the object of punishment is 
reformation, that reformation can only be the fruit of 
penitence, and that forgiveness, far from being simply 
the remission of punishment, is the necessary result of 
penitence, since offender and offended are absolutely at 
1 Cf . The Law of Psychic Phenomena, later chapters. 



104 Moberly 

one again if penitence is complete, being united in 
love and holiness. Like Dale, none the less, he iden- 
tifies the Law of Righteousness and Truth with God 
(p. 280). 

Turning then to the death of Christ, he regards it 
as the Act of Perfect Penitence. He claims that sin 
renders union with the perfect righteousness impossible, 
and so perfect penitence is only possible to the sinless 
— a penitence that takes the form of " the voluntary 
sin-bearing of the sinless, the self-identity with 
righteousness in condemnation of sin of One whose 
self-identity, though sinless, would take the form of 
surrender of the self in the very attitude of the ideal 
penitent" (p. 118). 

The next point is, as far as I know, a new one. 
The Pentecostal gift of the Holy Spirit is an integral 
part of the Atonement. " The real presence of the 
Incarnate as Spirit constituting the inmost personality 
of man, is the reality in man of that consummated 
victory of the penitence, or righteousness, of the Atone- 
ment, which was the culmination and end of Incar- 
nation " (p. 283). It is " the perpetual extension, or 
Spiritual realisation of the Incarnation 1 ." In connec- 
tion with this view of the function of the Holy Spirit 
towards man he discusses the nature of the Holy Trinity 

1 This extension would, unless I misunderstand him, be entirely 
repudiated by Dr Denney. " A finished work of Christ, and an 

objective atonement are synonymous terms." The Death, of 

Christ, p. 146. 



Moberly 105 

from the side of personality, and concludes that there is 
absolute identity between the presence of Christ and 
the presence of the Spirit of Christ : the Persons of 
the Trinity are distinct, but the Trinity is One God. 
The Spirit is the subjective realisation, in ourselves 
and as our true selves, of Jesus the Christ who was 
objectively manifested in human flesh. 

All the threads are then gathered up by the writer 
as he reviews the nature of human personality. Taking 
the three prerogatives of personal being, free-will, 
reason, and love, he shows that all these are incomplete 
in man : his freedom is very limited and partial, his 
reason is by no means a sure guide, his love is 
fitful and uncertain. On philosophical and theological 
grounds, as well as on the ground of common ex- 
perience, man is shown to reach his full measure of 
self-expression and self-realisation only in the way of 
relation, as part of a Whole. And perfect union, the 
full realisation of self, can only be attained through 
love, by absolute union with the Spirit of Human 
perfection. Human personality never was perfect ; 
each person was separated, shut off from relation with 
other personalities ; shut off more than ever by sin. 
The only thing that could perfect it was the abolition 
of all discontinuities, all partitions, all that was " in 
part," in the completeness of the Spirit of the Incarnate 
Christ. The Atonement was an at-one-ment in a fuller 
sense than has been generally realised. 



106 Lofthouse 

The chief criticism that might be levelled at this 
remarkable and original book is that the ethical 
side rather sinks into unduly small proportions ; while, 
as Hitchcock points out (vide infra), the writer's impli- 
cation of the substitution of Christ's Personality for 
ours, is as unphilosophical as the substitution of 
Christ's merit for ours 1 . But unquestionably the con- 
structive discussion of the completion of personality 
by union with Christ is a most valuable contribution 
to thought about the Atonement, 

In Lofthouse's Ethics and Atonement the ethical 
side of the question is regarded from the standpoint 
of personality, thus uniting the two main lines of 
thought, and combining them into a coherent and 
systematic scheme. And all through the writer shows 
how the Bible is founded on a realisation of both these 
standpoints, in contradistinction to all other sacred 
books. Beginning with a general consideration of 
ethics in and outside the Bible, he shows that ethics 
and religion are inseparable in any practical system. 
On the one hand, the Utilitarian is faced with a 
demand for explanation of his dogmatic assertion that 
a man must do good for the sake of future generations. 
On the other hand, the Intuitionist supplies no uni- 
versal norm of righteousness, since men's ideas on the 
subject differ. The only escape from the impasse lies 
in self-realisation in the broadest sense. Man and 
1 Hitchcock Atonement and Modern Thought, p. 109 



Lofthouse 107 

man are interdependent ; and the race can only find 
its true development in the mutual interaction of 
individuals. " The true basis of ethics, therefore, is 
neither self-interest nor duty ; it is what the Greeks 
would call Koivcovia — that instinct for fellowship which 
separates man from the beasts that perish, and with- 
out which man speedily degenerates into a lower 
organism 1 ." (It is interesting to note in this con- 
nection the importance of Moberly's contention that 
personality is becoming, not complete : the interaction 
of personalities develops them.) Man cannot attain 
his own fullest self-expression without acting in the 
ethical way, which in its turn brings advancement 
to the race. Neighbour and neighbour are united by 
ties which cannot be neglected. All virtues have their 
origin among persons. Sin is the breaking of this 
personal bond ; and sin is only reparable through 
suffering. Renewal through suffering lies at the heart 
of the Biblical narratives. And so too universally : 
" it is one of the paradoxes of human nature that when 
a man once realises the wrong he has done he will 
welcome and even long for the chance of making some 
reparation that shall place him where he was before he 
had yielded to temptation 2 ." There is an absolute 
ethical need for paying a debt : hence comes the 
idea of punishment. Punishment is not the offering 
of an equivalent — that is impossible — but it sets the 
1 p. 62. 2 p. 102. 



108 Lofthouse 

injurer and the injured in the right personal relation 
again. Till there is contrition, whose natural mode of 
expression is sacrifice or suffering, there can be no 
renewal of the personal intercourse, and the only way 
in which contrition can be induced in the unrepentant 
is by showing how the injured person takes the attitude 
that prompted the injury and how he suffers. Till 
there is contrition there can be no forgiveness : for- 
giveness would else be indulgence ; and till there is 
forgiveness there can be no renewal of personal inter- 
course. Where there is no repentance there must be a 
mediator, a reconciler. " It is the injured who must go 
to seek the injurer, who must place himself at the 
prodigal's side, bearing with him the consequences 
which the prodigal can feel and also those deeper 
sorrows which as yet he cannot feel " (p. 108). Only 
so can shame and repentance be aroused. 

How then, since sin is an offence against the 
Personal God, can we come into right relations with 
Him again ? If I follow the argument, Mr Lofthouse 
would answer : " A mediator is always necessary ; 
generally that mediator is the wronged person : the 
first approach to perfect reconciliation must come from 
him. How then can God approach man ? Only by God 
Himself coming as man and showing the penalty and 
the sorrow entailed by sin." The writer enters into 
an elaborate and suggestive analogy to illustrate the 



Lofthouse 109 

office of a mediator, and to show how inevitable it is 
that the mediator shall suffer. 

Turning then to the question of vicariousness, he 
utterly denies all forms of the doctrine of substi- 
tution. Christ suffered on our behalf. He did not 
exempt us from suffering, but He took away the sting 
of death and pain when He made re-union with God 
possible to us by changing our whole attitude towards 
sin. The question of the righteous anger of God is 
next considered as indicating an absolute ethic, together 
with its relations to forgiveness. The universality of 
the sacrificial instinct in man is discussed, and the 
completion and fulfilment of it in the death of Christ. 
The older sacrifices, in their corrupt form, suggested 
that purity and sinlessness might be transferred to one 
who was impure and sinful. In the sacrifice of Christ 
the true meaning of mediatorial suffering is made clear — 
the true explanation of the destruction of all impurity 
by identification of mind and will with the sinless will 
on which sin brought suffering. In some parts of this 
chapter (VI) the thought is not quite clear, and there 
seems to be some suggestion of vicarious substitution, 
but the main thought is, I think, as I have represented. 

Turning next to the Nature of Christ, Mr Lofthouse 
shows that one man can only influence another by a 
union and transfusion of personalities ; and that he can 
only effect a reconciliation between two other men by 
passing into each of them, and drawing them into 



110 Lqfthouse 

himself. Hence the reconciler of God and man must 
have the nature both of God and man. Thus the 
study of personality would seem to favour the view 
that in the coming of Christ lay the only possible 
means of atonement, which is the re-uniting of God 
and man. A discussion of the nature of Personality 
follows, very much on the same lines as that put forward 
by Moberly, but with more insistence on its inclusive 
aspect, a clear distinction being drawn between per- 
sonality and individuality. 

The whole argument is Bummed dp by Mr Loft house 
in these words : " The end of ethics and of religion alike 
is righteousness. Righteousness consists in the right 
relation between persons— that is, righteousness is fully 
reached when persons act to one another as if united 
to one another by the closest of known human ties, the 
ties of the family. But these ties are severed, instead 
of the sympathy and union of the line family, there is 
suspicion, hatred, injury, between person and person, 
between man and man, and between man and ( Jod ; and 
consequently misery, self -reproach, helplessness and 
despair. How can the Reconciliation, the Atonement 
be made ? When the injured can pass over to the 
injurer, expelling the latter's evil nature, and instilling 
his own goodness. This can only be accomplished by 
mediation, and by suffering ; and that is simply to say, 
by a person, taking the word in its highest and com- 
pletest sense. It is the strength of Personality to make 



i 



Askwith 111 

possible this passing over, this drawing of apparent 
opposites into one ; and it is the glory of Personality to 
attain this by suffering, by laying down life to take it 
up again, and to bestow it on others. Personality, the 
impulse and the power to share the worst that another 
can bear, and to impart the best that one can oneself 
possess, is the true ladder which is let down from 
heaven to earth, and along which we mortals can 
emulate the angels by passing back and forth ; it is 
the royal road of spiritual communication, by which 
what is true of one becomes true of another, and what 
is done to one becomes done to another ; even as the 
supreme Person said, * he that receiveth you receiveth 
me ; and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent 
me 1 .' " 

In the final chapter the universality of the Atone- 
ment is briefly considered. 

Lastly, Dr Askwith in his article in the Cambridge 
Theological Essays insists, though briefly, on a point 
that has been left rather in the background by many 
writers, namely the need for the unimpaired freedom 
of man's will if there is to be complete union between 
God and man. Indeed the true freedom of the will, 
impaired by sin, must be recovered altogether, before 
man can once more stand in the likeness of God. It is 
true that the will is an essential part of the personality 
which is to find completion in union with God, but this 

1 pp. 264, 265. 



112 The Theological Survey 

side of personality nevertheless deserves more particular 
notice than it has received. 

We have now completed our survey of the views of 
theologians in regard to the Atonement. Let us next, 
rejecting those views that merely reflect a passing phase 
of thought, plan out the road which theological thought 
lays down. 

1. A great plan is being worked out in the world, 
by which love is to find its fulfilment in the mutual 
relation of Creator and created. 

2. Perfect love must be free. God gave to man 
freedom, that the love of man might be perfect. 

3. Man misused his freedom, and the sin that 
resulted from this misuse made a barrier between him 
and the Perfect God in whom sin could have no part ; 
and many would say too that in some mysterious way 
the first sin affected the whole future race. 

4. " God so loved the world that He gave His only 
Begotten Son " to bring about reconciliation through 
His death, and to reveal the Nature of God and the 
destiny and true personality of man. This revela- 
tion of the Father in the Son was destined, most men 
believe, to have been made even if man had remained 
sinless, for perfect communion could only be achieved 
by union of Godhead and manhood 1 . But sin 

1 Westcott's writings are largely responsible for the prevalence 
of the Scotist view of the Incarnation at the present time. See note 
p. 117. 






The Person of Satan 113 

introduced a new necessity, and infused tragedy into 
what should have been the happy consummation 
of the race. 

5. Sin could not be passed over, for it intro- 
duced discord. Either man must remain for ever 
separate from God, which could not be, for God's 
plan could not be brought to nought, or there must 
be atonement. 

6. In Christ's death the gulf is bridged. 

So far there is fairly general agreement. But in 
regard to the details of sin and atonement we have 
seen how widely divergent have been the opinions that 
obtained at different periods. Nevertheless, careful 
examination clearly reveals the direction in which 
thought is moving. 

In the earlier stages sin is attributed without 
hesitation to the machinations of an evil Person. The 
origin of this view is to be found, no doubt, in the 
general tendency of all primitive races, which is also 
specially characteristic of the Oriental mind, to people 
the universe with a graded hierarchy of spirits of 
every possible kind — a tendency noticeable even in the 
canonical literature of the Jews. But the form which 
it took in Christian literature was no doubt largely 
influenced by Persian thought as modified in the 
dualistic systems of the Gnostic sects. . As the Gnostic 
influence dies away the person of Satan looms less and 
less large, even though it enters into every theory 

m. 8 



114 Ethical "/"/ 

excepting the mod recent. His rightful claim 01 
the souls of men is repudiated. The arena of discussion 
<'levated more and more into the ethical plane, rwn 
though at first the point of view is legal rather than 
metaphysical* 

At the same time an attempt to approach 
problem from the standpoint of personality is dimly 
foreshadowed in the I of those who saw in the 

Incarnation not only the iii'M' B demption, but the 

fulfilment of i destined p 1 lod to mi 

and uniting man to (Jod in -till closer bonds. But it 

did not enough to lead to to solrc 

the vexed question whether any otl os but the 

Passion of the Son could loffioe to ato 

On the other band, the hard logic of legal etl 

led eventually to the I 00 of love to I secondary 

position, and ended m the terrible and blasphemous 
theode iny of the Etefo] men ; the 

sinner, not the sin, became 1 1 I, and st< 

loveless grace seemed the higl 

At last came | reaction. Thoee who attacked the 

problem from the rtlucal ride, while emphatic in 
their belief in an absolute ethic, laid stress on the 1" 
of God and the persona] ohai relation 

between man and God. Others based their reasoning 
on the nature of Personality. And from the fusion, or 
rather the alignment, of these two arose the modern 

belief which finds illation of apparent d 



Permmal Theories 115 

crepancies, through a mo rching i: .-non of 

the nature and origin of ethics, in the view that the 
fundamental imperative of ethics must be derived from 
the nature of Personality. Without definitely com- 
mitting itself, modern thought seems to me to be 
moving clearly towards the belief that the death of 
( hrist was the only possible means of reconciliation 
between man and God, from the very nature of J ( 
sonality. 

In these summaries of the evolutionary and theo- 
logical modes of thought about the iii\>' man's 
destiny and God's will, of sin and itfl results, it will be 
seen that there is very little antagonism. M the 
difficulties are removed whan the Law <>f Righteousness 
is considered from the standpoint <»f Personality. T 
important questions however iv.juire fuller ra- 
tion. On the evolutionary theory we hai o that 
sin is at-one-ment of the spiritual nature with the law 
of katabolic change. How can the death of the Saviour 
produce at-one-ment with tin 4 law of pro 

And secondly, what have we to Bay of original sin ! 
Belief in this is extraordinarily prevalent : perhaps it 
would not be too much to say it is inherent in human 
nature. The older theological BJB OCOUnt for it : 

in the modern ones it is relegated to a very subordinate 
position, and left without any satisfactory explanation. 
What is the meaning of this belief in original siii 
These two questions must now engage our attention. 

8—2 



116 Hitchcock 

Note. Since the foregoing chapter was written an important 
book on The Atonement and Modern Thought, by F. R. Montgomery 
Hitchcock, has appeared, which requires notice. 

In saying that this book is mainly eclectic we do not at all wish to 
imply that it is not of great value to the student , the author expressly 
says, " This is no attempt to reconstruct the doctrine of the Atone- 
ment on new lines ; but it is an effort to indicate the leading 
principles of a theory which may be based on Scripture and yet true 
to philosophy," and he keeps within the limits he has set himself. 
In spite of the great erudition displayed, the book as a whole is not 
difficult, and the clearness of presentment and copious references give 
it a great value, apart from the sobriety of judgment and the 
reverence, and often beauty, of t r eatm ent, that characterise it. 

The first chapter deals with the various theories of sin that have 
been propounded both from the theological and the philosophical 
points of view. The tenuity of the Scriptural warrant for the Calvin- 
istic doctrine of Original Sin is shown, and a stromr protest entered 
against any form of Traducianism. The weak points in the Hegelian 
and the Ritschlian definitions of sin are lucidly summarised. Next. 
the evolutionary theories of Pfleidercr and Tennant are examined. 
The writer's own view of Original Sin is that it is to be explained 
in terms of the solidarity of the race rather than by any form of 
traducian doctrine. But he considers that the existence and univer- 
sality of sin is a sufficient basis for a Gospel of Atonement, indepen- 
dently of any special theory of the way in which sin originated. 
With this we cannot agree ; if sin is merely an evolutionary product ; 
if it merely constitutes an episode in the story of animal evolution ; it 
is surely no longer possible to look on man as separated from God by 
an eternally impassable gulf, and therefore our view of the absolute 
necessity of the Atonement as the only means whereby man could 
achieve his destiny must undergo considerable modification. Indeed 
the writer himself admits this by implication when he criticises the 
systems of those who would minimise the sinfulness of sin, either by 
making it only a step on the road to goodness, or by showing the 
sense of sin to be an inevitable, necessary stage in the development of 
the spirit by the action of the evolutionary forces. Later on, he 
himself expresses the view that sin was inevitable, but this is very 
different from saying that it was a necessary stage in the evolution of 



Hitchcock 117 

man — necessary that is, to man's progress. He looks on sin as 
entirely subjective, the Spirit convincing of sin more and more the 
higher the soul aspires. That this is in a large measure true is 
obvious, and the theory has the further advantage of explaining the 
intensity of the sense of sin in the greatest saints, and of holding out a 
rational hope of the gradual disappearance of sin as the soul becomes 
more developed, and so more God-like. Sin is the choosing of evil 
by the will, not because it is evil, but in spite of it ; and Atonement 
becomes a " spiritual force for a new life," presented objectively in 
the life and death of Christ, and appropriated by us subjectively by 
the Grace of the Holy Spirit. 

la Chapter n the Scotist view is adopted, largely on the ground 
that any other would involve a schism in the Divine Personality. 
The Atonement was not confined to the Death of Christ ; his whole 
earthly life was a reorganisation of disorganised humanity. The 
Lord's Divinity did not give the power of infinite penal suffering as 
the Calvinists taught, nor yet infinite value to any penal suffering : 
the whole idea of a legal equivalent is rejected ; like most modern 
writers Mr Hitchcock utterly refuses to entertain any form of the 
substitution theory as being repugnant to the moral sense of man ; 
rather His Divinity gave infinite value to His Life and Death as 
being a divine triumph over death and sin, and as vindicating the 
moral unity and solidarity of the cosmos. Thus, as in Lofthouse's 
book, the system is based on a fusion of the ideas of an absolute 
ethic of universal validity — the Law of Righteousness of Dale — and 
the conception of personality ; indeed these things are so closely 
interrelated that they form an inextricable nexus : the warp and woof 
of the whole cosmology. In this lies a great part of the value of the 
book, which fitly ends the series through which we have traced the 
development of thought. Like Westcott l , the author considers that 
the Incarnation was involved in the Atonement : the Incarnation is 
the key of the Atonement and not vice-versa. He is not clear as to 
the necessity of the Death of the Redeemer for the work of redemp- 
tion, but its fittingness is emphasised as being the victory of love, as 
manifesting the continuity of the seen and unseen worlds, and as 
marking the entire oneness of Christ with the race of which He is at 

1 E.g. Gospel of Life, p. 253; Lessons from Work, p. 64; Gospel of the 
Resurrection, p. 174 ; and many other passages. 



118 Hitchcock 

once the Head and the Representative. The genesis and growth of 
the stress laid upon the sufferings of Christ owing to the successive 
influences of Judaism, Mithraism, and Docetism in their different 
directions are traced with considerable originality. Moberly's sub- 
stitution of the Divine Personality for the human is repudiated, and 
the interpenetration of personalities in close communion is insisted 
on in its stead — a side brought into prominence also by Lofthouse. 
The philosophical objections to the moral perfectness of Jesus are 
refuted ; and the chapter ends with a consideration of expiation, 
propitiation, remission, and redemption in the light of what has 
already been said. Expiation is the covering of our insufficiency 
with His sufficiency. Propitiation is the removal of our sins in the 
meeting-place of the love of God. Remission is the setting free from 
sins. Redemption is the Betting free of our whole nature from the 
tyranny and bondage of sin. Here comes in the work of the Holy 
Spirit in the Atonement — in this point the writer follows Moberly. 

The object of Chapter in is to show how the Cross is to be 
reconciled with the original purpose of God in the Creation. The 
vindication of righteousness, and of the wrath of God again.-t -in. 
manifested in the atoning Death of Christ, is olearty Bet out, the 
essential principle of all being love. It is life, not death, thai 
wants, and the Cross gives life. Hut the sinfulno— <»f no i> empha- 
sised : the Cross conveys to man M the idea that God's love would 
save man from the sentence of Divine holiness on sin M ; it does not 
minimise the sterner aspect of the Divine life. The evil in man is 
M removed, essentially and potentially, by the Son of man." " The 
Incarnation is the key of the problem. It enables us to perceive that 
God was in Christ removing the sin of the world ; reconciling the 
world unto Himself; bearing the responsibility of the Creator of a 
race for which, considering the conditions of human growth and 
freedom, sin was inevitable, and feeling in the abysmal deeps of His 
all-inclusive and all-pervading Personality, the consequences of the 
sin of humanity." Sin is here clearly stated to be inevitable — a view 
on which most of us would rather hold judgment suspended, at 
any rate. 

The Atonement is partly objective, partly subjective ; and it is, as 
Moberly wrote, " a continuous process, not a completed act." 

In Chapter rv the problem of Mediation is admirably dealt with, 



Hitchcock 119 

and the argument of this important chapter is summarised on pp. 
180—183. 

Chapter v is concerned with the central point of Mr Hitchcock's 
theory, the Identification of the Saviour with the Race — an idea made 
much of in Wilberforce's book, it will be remembered, and again 
emphasised by Dale and by Matthew Arnold. But the writer discusses 
at length how human solidarity is intensified by " the self-identifica- 
tion of the immanent, indwelling Christ with the race " ; by the 
uniting of sinful men in the inclusive Personality of the Sinless One 
who is yet present in each one, bearing the brunt of the attacks of 
sin, and conquering it. 

The remaining chapters need not be considered for the purposes of 
this survey, though they offer many suggestive points. They are 
occupied with a fuller discussion of Retribution, Forgiveness, and 
Reconciliation. The book is completed by chapters on Priesthood 
and Sacrifice ; The Lamb of God ; and Atonement and Responsibility. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE CONSEQUENCES OF BIN 

In our investigation we have found a miracle 
pervading all life. Leaving the mystery of origins on 
one side as unsolved, perhaps insoluble by human 
reason, this one strange miracle emerged more and 
more clearly as we marshalled our facts — the miracle of 
increasing indetermination arising out of the deter- 
minate interplay of forces acting on material organisms ; 
the miracle of the material organism opening I 
fields for the development of its own indetermination 
by determinate response to its surroundings. On the 
one hand we have the individual organism apparently 
subject to the laws of dissipation, on the other we have 
the race continually progressing in opposition to those 
laws. Yet this race-progress depends in some measure 
on the individual ; in the lower stages perhaps, through 
sexual selection and the like ; certainly in the higher, 
when conscious volition comes into play. But the 
biologist is not much concerned with individuals, so for 



Teleology 121 

the moment we will confine our attention to the race, 
in order to bring out the importance of the individuals 
in the higher stages. We may say then that, broadly 
speaking, the life-process seems to tend always in one 
direction, towards the development of freedom through 
struggle with the forces of limitation. Beneath the 
hard crust of circumstance is a welling fountain which 
is bound to find egress. At first an almost imperceptible 
film of moisture oozes through unsuspected crannies ; 
the film becomes a trickle, the trickle swells into a 
stream, until at length the crust is swept bodily away 
in the torrent. So the vital impulse welling up, sweeps 
away all barriers of determination. It is purposive : 
there is a teleology in life — a teleology that is to be 
found in the victory of freedom, in the triumphant 
march of living matter under the urging of the vital 
impulse. 

Now the theologian sees in life not only purpose, 
but Divine purpose. He looks on man, with his freedom 
of will, as the outcome of Divine Love which from its 
very and essential nature seeks to satisfy itself by 
loving ; which can only perfectly love the perfect and 
the free ; which, embracing all that is perfect, seeks to 
embrace yet more, and so creates. To the theologian, 
the end and aim of life is Love, complete union with 
the loving I AM, the Father of Light, the " centre and 
soul of every sphere," with whom is no shadow that is 
cast by turning ; the perfect, complete Being who is 



122 Theologian and 

yet ever increasing by that same creative need of Love. 
For modern theology, which looks on God as Immanent 
in all His evolving creation, as well as being the 
Transcendent I AM, seems more and more to suggest 
that God too is in a sense becoming ; that the love His 
creation offers makes fresh demands on His Love, 
which so is ever comprehending — embracing — fresh 
love, and which ever seeks expansion in creative 
activity. 

That is to say, as far as the animal world is con- 
cerned, the theologian sees a toleological significance in 
all the struggles of the age-loni: development that has 
found its culmination, as yet, in man. For him, " the 
whole creation groaneth and travaileth together until 
now, waiting for the adoption" And certainly the 
miracle of increasing indetermination in a determinate 
environment, which emerges as the essential feature of 
evolutionary progress, does not negative this view. 
Certainly the conclusion to which we have come, that 
sin is conscious opposition to the vital impulse that 
underlies or produces this miracle, is not antagonistic 
to it. The theologian, working backwards from the 
highest stage, sees a purpose, that is love, and that 
demands freedom and love for its fulfilment ; the 
evolutionary philosopher, working forwards, mainly, 
from the lowest stage, finds the miraculous emergence 
of freedom from determinate conditions and inter- 
actions. The theologian believes in a creative Being 



Evolutionary Philosopher 123 

who is drawing other beings to Himself, making them 
make themselves like Him — and if they can ever be 
like Him, there must be community of nature ; they too 
must be able in some degree to love and to create ; the 
evolutionary philosopher finds an evolution which is 
producing beings with greater and greater creative 
power : beings that from the first have a rudimentary 
capacity of adding to their environment and that of 
other creatures, which capacity of origination increases 
higher up in the scale until it comes to be exercised 
consciously and voluntarily. 

Surely there is no need for fundamental disagree- 
ment between our theologian and our evolutionary 
philosopher when the facts are stated in this form. If 
he will but look deep enough, the theologian has simply 
to take the philosopher's work and put his own inter- 
pretation on it. 

Assuming, then, that there is no real antagonism 
between the two points of view, let us turn to the great 
question — the problem of Sin and of Atonement. 

We have seen that it is at any rate possible and 
reasonable to regard sin as voluntary antagonism to 
the miracle of the vital impulse. A man does not sin 
with this full understanding of what he is doing ; but, 
in so far as there is the slightest idea of " better " or 
" worse " as applied to action, there is recognition of the 
existence of two tendencies in life, and to choose the 
wrong path must lead to the suspension or extinction 



124 The Race 

of the vital impulse as surely as it did in the lower 
stages of creation, for it is the voluntary rejection of 
the condition of progress 1 . Philosopher and theologian 
are still on common ground. 

But in the lower stages which we have considered 
so far, for the race there is no second chance. We 
have taken as an axiom of our discussion the idea that 
compromise with katabolism, acceptance of equilibrium, 
inert disregard of the divine unrest, means death in 
the long run. Among the unconscious creatures the 
race that, as a whole, chooses the wrong path is 
doomed. 

And this is equally true of races of men. All the 
processes of evolution are vastly hastened when the 
plane of self-consciousness is reached, hut. as we have 
seen 2 , we have no reason to suppose that the laws 
which govern progress are changed : we have no reason 
to suppose that the acceptance of equilibrium is less 
fatal to the race than it was before ; rather, we have 
much evidence to the contrary. Many dead and dying 
branches still retain their union with the Tree of 
Human Life, but they cannot remain for ever : either 
they will fall, dislodged by their own decay, or else 

1 This is only true, of course, if we admit the argument of 
Chapter i, that the environment as a whole is one and continuous, 
and that the laws of progress are uniform throughout ; and even so, 
there is clearly another great factor to be considered — the factor of 
voluntary action. 

2 Ch. i. 



The Individual 125 

some cataclysmic shock, some hurricane, will hurl them 
down. The ground beneath is strewn with the debris 
of former civilisations. 

But there is a difference, and a vital one, between 
the evolution of the beasts and of man. With man, 
for the first time, we have to face the problem of the 
individual, the person. The failures in the lower 
stages are race-failures only. The unconscious animal 
is not a self. Its failure or success is not the failure 
or success of an individual, but rather indicates the 
failure of a race. We cannot consider the individual 
jelly-fish as a person, but only as a unit. The success 
or failure of a jelly-fish has no meaning to us : we can 
only appreciate the success or failure of jelly-fish, for a 
jelly-fish has not a self-determining consciousness which 
knows itself. At most there is the matrix in which 
consciousness might have been precipitated, if the 
jelly-fish had not specialised as a jelly-fish, but had 
evolved into a man. 

And again, the rate of progress in the lower stages 
is too slow for us to recognise any general change in 
the race (apart from the variations that are constantly 
present) during the few generations we can observe, 
except such changes as are brought about by the pur- 
poseful intervention of man. We cannot tell, except 
by a survey of the whole animate world since the 
beginning, which are the successes and which the 
failures ; only by comparison can we judge of the 



126 Race-co7iscionsness and 

degree of success. We can see dimly that each stage 
is an end in itself, as well as being perhaps a beginning ; 
of value as an end only when it is also capable of being 
a beginning ; when it does not represent the last paving- 
stone of a blind-alley. By a great effort of imagination 
we can conceive the importance of each individual 
organism. But it is only by projecting our own 
personality into it that we can look on it as a self. A 
self must be conscious of itself, and if there is any 
degree of self-consciousness in the lower animals, wt 
do not understand 01 know it. (Jroup-consciousness, 
community-consciousness, one mind among many indi- 
viduals, we know : the Ants and Bees and Wasps 
undoubtedly have it, and the Termites ; higher up we 

find it, among Beavers and Rooks ; we find traces of it 

perhaps in the tribal consciousness of primitive races. 
Race-consciousness also there may he ; perhaps instinct 
is one manifestation of it : but here we have verv little 
to go upon. A dog or a horse or a cat, too, may be half 
a self, for iravra pel. Nature draws no hard and 
lines elsewhere, and non-self most probably passes 
into self by imperceptible gradations 1 , But certainly 

1 One difficulty which puzzles many people — the appearance of 
reason and a rudimentary moral sense in some animals — seems to me 
a somewhat artificial one. Given the One continuous Environment, 
there is no reason why the ^uper-sensual inliiu-neo might not he ahle 
to act on organisms which had responded in quite different ways to 
other environmental stimuli, and were so. on the physical side, very 
differently constituted. In most cases the organism would not be 



Individual Consciousness 127 

as a rule it is only by projecting our own personality 
into animals that we come to look upon them as selves. 
They are individuals, but they are only persons just in 
so far as they recognise themselves as persons, and the 
measure of self-consciousness in the brute-world is 
almost certainly very small, even in the few cases 
where we may suspect it to exist. But we know so 
little about the personality even of a dog, if it exists, 
that we must be content to let the whole question of 
half-developed personality rest. 

capable of any great response, and so would remain lowly developed 
on the mental — even possibly the spiritual — side. I cannot see that 
the physical form of a man is the only one that could possibly be the 
suitable basis for the development of spiritual faculties. In our 
world, doubtless, it is the only one that ha3 proved adequate, except 
in a very rudimentary form ; but there may be other worlds, and other 
sheep that are not of this fold, who are being brought. If so, to our 
eyes they might seem very strange creatures, with quite a different 
physical substratum from our own, but yet with souls, perhaps far 
more beautiful souls than most of ours. This is pure speculation, 
but the thought is I think valuable, if only to explain the sporadic 
appearance of mind and spirit in the brute creation, which so 
audaciously seem to claim a share in man's prerogative. Of these 
half-selves we cannot speak now ; we know nothing ; we can only 
believe that somehow it is all right, for them as well as for us. We 
have always the mystery of the failures : the mystery of the half- 
souls — the half-successes — whether animal or human, is greater still. 
But yet, oi>xl iravres elalv XeLrovpyiKa wvev/nara; The utilisation of 
waste-products is one of the most striking phenomena in the economy 
of the living creature, and these creatures which are off the main line 
of evolution, be they high or low in the scale — we dare not call them 
waste-products — fulfil an essential function in the world, making 
possible the evolution of higher types. 



128 The Destiny of the Animal 

The caravan-route of evolutionary progress is strewn 
with the bones of the w^eak, and only those who are fit 
survive to reach even the next caravanserai. We can 
pity even while w r e hasten on ; we can see how r they 
helped us on our journey while they could, not volun- 
tarily, it is true, but none the less really ; and we feel 
that something is owing to them for their unconscious 
service — some recompense, or at least some recognition. 
George Adam Smith draws attention to the fact that 
" Isaiah and Paul, chief apostles of the tw T o covenants, 
both interrupt their magnificent odes upon the out- 
pouring of the Spirit, to remind us that the benefr 
this will be shared by the brute and unintelii 
creation," noting the parallelism between Isaiah xi. 6 — 
9 and Romans viii. Westcott also [Lessons from Work, 
p. 44) remarks on the parallelism of the thought of 
Romans viii. with the Apocalyptic Vision of the Four 
Living Creatures. And Jesus said not a sparrow falls, 
but the Father knoweth and careth. We do not know, 
though we do care, but God both knows and cares. 
Our minds are not competent even to attempt to 
reason about these intermediate stages, merging im- 
perceptibly into one another, just because we think in 
categories. Therefore we must leave them wholly out 
of account. What concerns us now is that w r e certainly 
have to deal with personality in man, while, on the 
whole, it is true to say that we have not to deal with 
personality in the lower orders. 



Consequences and Punishments 129 

Men, then, as races, seem to be subject to the old 
law that suppression or repression of the vital impulse 
is inevitably followed by extinction. It has been truly 
said that in Nature there are no rewards nor punish- 
ments, only consequences. But men as consciously- 
creative beings are individually responsible for the 
tendency of their nation : the nation moves as it is 
urged by the individuals. If its course is towards de- 
struction it is the majority of its individuals that is 
responsible 1 : individual sin becomes the race's undoing 
when the individuals are free and self-determining. 
If then, as the theologian avers, there is a just God, 
the final debt must be paid by the guilty individuals, 
although all alike pay the natural penalty of race- 
extinction 2 . For individual sin, as we have seen, tends 
to the undoing of the whole world-plan, " making the 
promises of God of none effect " by acceptance of the 
opposing forces around. 



1 It would perhaps be truer, though less grammatical, to say " are 
responsible." " There is a higher law in grammar not to be put down 
by Andrews and Stoddard," says 0. Wendell Holmes in The Autocrat 

2 The fact that progressive races on the main road of development 
are occasionally wiped out by reactionary races, seems to me nihil ad 
rem in regard to the argument. And it is certainly true to say that, 
though, for example, the Albigenses as a people were practically 
extinguished, they aided the evolution of the race as really as if they 
had survived. Indeed, we have in these cases some suggestion of the 
freeing of the spirit : the animal's lampada Iradam is at best physical, 
but here the spiritual progress is passed on, in spite of physical 
destruction. 

M. 9 



130 The Separation of 

Here then, for the first time, we find individual 
responsibility and conscious individual opposition to 
good, which is opposition to God. And at once we 
have to deal with quite a new thing. Before, we had 
mistakes, now we have sins. Union with a perfect God 
becomes at once impossible — all theological systems 
recognise this, as we saw in the last chapter — when 
positive evil has become ingrained in the nature of any 
being. 

Yet if, as wo believe, man came into being at the 
urging of the Divine Love, which craves for expansion 
through the creative power of mutual relationship, 
some solution must be found. The Divine will cannot 
be frustrated, yet the human will cannot be compelled. 
Freedom has been granted, because without freedom 

there is no love. That freedom cannot now be bound — 
indeed, even if it could, the Divine will would be frus- 
trated, for the free love which alone gives value to the 
inter-relations between God and Man would be for ever 
made impossible. One single act of constraint would 
change the whole course of a man's life in some m« 
and so the relationship between constrained and con- 
strainer must be changed for ever. It may be a small 
matter, judged by human standards, but judged by 
the ultimate standard of absolute perfection, that one 
act has made all the difference between perfection and 
imperfection. What escape is there from this impasse ? 
For man, none. But for God ? 



Man from God 131 

And here we approach the deepest mystery of the 
Universe, that has ever baffled men's understanding, 
and that, in the light of the evolutionary theory of sin, 
becomes at first sight even less intelligible than before. 
It is a mystery we cannot solve, because we are men, 
but it is a mystery we can begin to solve. We can at 
least hope to find the lines along which a solution must 
be sought, because we have the God-nature in us. A 
poor mathematician may be able to reduce a problem 
into such a form that he can say, " Had I the requisite 
skill in manipulation I could solve this." There is 
then no arrogance, no irreverence, in searching for the 
method of solution, even though we know that the 
problem in its entirety is hopelessly beyond us. 

If we recall what we have said about sin, it becomes 
clear that a man who is living a life of " sin " in the 
sense in which we have used it — that of opposition to 
the inward urgings — may be a very respectable man 
withal, possessing a whole Pantheon of his own full of 
images of Respectability, Mammon, Good Manners, 
Social Virtues, Political Creeds, and the like, to which 
sacrifices are paid with full ceremonial rites ; his con- 
science may be narcotically peaceful ; and yet that 
man be putting all his weight in the scale of anti- 
progress. He may not be conscious of it ; he may 
never remember having experienced any tussles with 
his conscience : there are many who have adopted the 
moral drug-habit from very early years : but at one 

9—2 



132 Sin 

stage or another there is a conscious spurning of 
ideals ; and woe betide the race whose members spurn 
their ideal. It suffers, it decays ; and the decay of a 
nation means the checking of progress for centuries. 
Another nation has to be brought up to a suitable 
stage of development before there can be further 
progress. Centuries of struggle were needed before 
the philosophic insight of the Greeks and the me- 
chanical knowledge of the Egyptians, for example, were 
re-attained. So true is this, that some writers see in 
human life but a cycle, ever returning on itself 1 ; though 
perhaps a spiral would give a truer analogy, and the 
waves of the sea on a rising tide, one still truer. Not 
only does the nation itself decay, but the whole 
evolutionary movement is checked. 

The same happens in the lower stages of animal 
life, but here there is no conscious choice of the worse, 
and so, no sin. The essence of sin is this : 

M Video meliora proboque : 
Deteriora scquor." 

Individual sin, then, being individual opposition to 
what seems to be the end for which man has come to 
be, is voluntary individual antagonism to the will of 
God. And by this antagonism the personal man must 
forfeit all union with the Personal God — not only all 
claim to union, but all possibility of union. 

Most certainly there is need of atonement — or 

1 Petrie, Revolutio?is of Civilisation. 



Summary 133 

rather, since that word has become " polarised," to use 
Wendell Holmes' expression, and sets along a definite 
meridian in our mind, let us at present use the equi- 
valent word re-union — between God and man, unless 
the world is to be a fruitless, unsuccessful effort of the 
Creator. The granting of potential freedom constituted 
a kind of /cevcoais 1 of the Godhead, by self- limitation ; 
but this Kevcoais was destined to end in a irXripcofia^ 
that should embrace not only the Godhead, but His per- 
fected creation, within an all-pervading unity of Love. 
Man, by his sin, made this TrXrjpco/j.a unattainable. 

Let us now review what we have said. 

So long as there was no self-consciousness, the 
creation was blameless. No punishments, in the strict 
sense of the word, followed on failure to progress ; only 
consequences. And necessarily so, for the failures were 
race-failures, the consequences, race-extinction. The 
individual was a unit, not a person : its life was 
governed by rigorous undeviating necessity. Creature 
of its environment, sport of contending events outside 
itself, its only duty lay in propagation. The rest was 
in other hands which worked with deadly precision. 
The race had another role. To it was entrusted the 
struggle against Fate. Its task was to enlarge the 
little cell in the bleak grey mass of circumstance in 

1 kenosis — emptying. The term is used throughout this book in 
the sense of self-limitation. 

2 pleroma — sum-total, fulfilment. 



134 Consciousness and 

which its lot was cast ; to seek a way of escape from 
the tangled lianas that threatened to choke it — deadly- 
network of antecedent and consequent — that it might 
have room to move whither it would. This increasing 
race-freedom is of course only perceptible in the 
individuals of widely separated generations 1 . Yet the 
race itself has many of the characteristics of an entity, 
ever progressing, and we have found it convenient to 
treat it as such. 

But at last even the race itself achieves a con- 
siderable measure of freedom, by what we have called 
the " inturning" of the general consciousness on itself 
through which the individuals come to know themselves 

1 There may appear to be some contradiction between this I 
ment (and similar one> used 00 pp. 77 and 14.'*) and the unqualified 
statement on p. 45 that " for the organism itself there is some 
measure of indctermination. for the race, apparently, none/' Careful 
consideration of the context will, howev e r , show that the contra- 
diction is only apparent. On p. 45 we were arguing that progress 
was inevitable, and must proceed, as ;i whole, along a determined 
path towards self-realisation. Individual groups of organisms might 
develop along their own lines, but most of these lines must even- 
tually end in a cul-de-sac. Only along one line was complete -elf- 
realisation possible. In this sense there is no indctermination for the 
race : life, as a whole, must move along one path towards one goal. 

In the present passage (and the others referred to above) a nar- 
rower field is under review. The races with which we are here dealing 
are the individual groups of organisms, and these do achieve some 
measure of indetermination. 

Thus the apparent contradiction is seen to be due to the usage of 
the word " race " in two senses : — the whole race of living organi.-ms. 
and one special race or group — a usage rendered almost inevitable by 
absence of definite words for these things in our language. 



the Vital Impulse 135 

as selves, and by the studied, concerted action of its 
component individuals. 

And here a digression is desirable in order to deal 
a little more fully with a point that we touched upon 
in Chapter n. We followed Bergson in identifying 
consciousness with the vital impulse. What then 
is its relation to what I have called the race- 
consciousness ? It is difficult to answer this question. 
But, none the less, if we follow Bergson 1 in assigning 
an " unconscious consciousness," however rudimentary, 
to the units of the race, we are bound, I think, 
to recognise that there is some external evidence for 
the assumption that the aggregate of all the unit- 
consciousnesses of a race, or at least of a group, is a 
unity in itself, clearly purposive. I cannot see that on 
our hypothesis any other explanation of the hive- 
consciousness of bees and the like is admissible 2 . And 
if we have these well-developed instances before us, 
there is at the least some justification for believing that 
a similar race- or group-consciousness may exist in other 
cases, becoming more and more tenuous the lower we 
descend, until the only justification we have for 
imagining its existence even as a latent factor lies in 
the fact that it is often manifested higher up in the 
scale, and in our belief in the continuity of the life- 
process. Although we have not stated it in so many 

1 E.g. Creative Evolution, p. 190, and many other passages. 

2 I hope to discuss this question more fully in another book. 



136 Personality 

words hitherto, this idea obviously underlies the identi- 
fication of the vital impulse with consciousness which 
we, following Bergson, have made. 

As far as I can see, part of the confusion that is 
said to exist in Bergson's usage of the terms " vital 
impulse " and " consciousness " may be attributed to a 
lack of clearness in distinguishing the property of the 
individual in virtue of which it can bear and transmit 
the vital impulse, with the vital impulse itself. The 
first is individual, the second racial. The vital impulse 
urges the race to develop ; but it can only act in 
virtue of the power of development inherent in each 
individual. The two interact, but they are not the 
same, though it seems to me that Bergson sometimes 
treats them as such. Perhaps the facts might be better 
expressed by using the term " consciousness " for the 
individual, " vital impulse " for the race ; yet this is 
in many ways undesirable, as the two seem closely 
intertwined. At any rate, in the end the individuals 
recognise themselves as bearers of the power of deve- 
lopment, not only for the race but for themselves. In 
other words, by recognising their claims and needs as 
individuals they come eventually to realise themselves, 
and so become selves. The consciousness has now 
become inturned upon itself, and the result is, as we 
have said, self-consciousness. Whether race self-con- 
sciousness too comes at all into being is at the very 
least doubtful : hive-consciousness and perhaps national 



The Consequences of Sin 137 

consciousness may be manifestations of it : but it can 
never go far. And the reason is not far to seek. It is 
the individuals, not the race, that pass on the vital 
flame, it is in the individuals primarily that freedom 
exists ; it is the individuals that become persons ; and 
if we see purpose in the world, it is for the develop- 
ment of personality that the world came into existence. 

A full discussion of the line of thought just indi- 
cated is however beyond the scope of this book, and, 
besides, is hardly germane to the matter in hand. For 
us the important point is to recognise that we are 
dealing with a wholly new thing when once the indi- 
vidual has recognised that there is a goal toward which 
the race is moving ; that he is a self, and that he can 
choose to help or hinder. 

The individual, not the race, becomes now of prime 
importance. For the race there are still mainly con- 
sequences, but for the individual, punishments. For 
just in so far as he recognises an ideal of any kind, so 
far he concedes that life is moving towards a goal : 
just in so far as he spurns that ideal, so far he is 
voluntarily opposing the progress of life, so far he is 
opposing the will of Him who gave that life, so far he 
is liable to the inevitable punishment of separation 
from God — a separation that must be absolute and 
complete, however small the sin, since between the 
Perfect and that which can never hecome perfect an 
impassable gulf is fixed. Man is for ever tainted with 



138 The Problem of Re-union 

imperfection 1 . He can never enter into perfect union 
with God. Physical death must be the end ; or if not, 
the personality must wander for ever incomplete, 
eternally banished from God by its incompleteness. 
The incompleteness, the imperfection, is not merely 
negative ; it is not a lacuna that can be filled in, but 
an integral part of his being. Therefore there seems 
no way out. Man has rejected the ideal that is implicit 
in the miracle of life, and so has declared himself out 
of sympathy with the will of God that is being fulfilled 
in life. 

What possibility is there of re-union ? What, 
viewed from this standpoint, seem to our limited minds 
the fundamental changes and needs before such re- 
union can be conceived as possible ? 

A new creation is needed. There must be a fresh 
creation to replace that which was marred. The flawed 
human will must be replaced by a whole human will. 

God cannot do this ; if He did, man's freedom would 
be infringed even by that constraining act of Love, and 
so the perfectness would not be restored, for perfect 
love must spring from perfect freedom. 

Man cannot do it unaided ; for the whole race is 
affected. Something like race-sin exists where the 
race is composed of self-conscious individuals, some- 
thing that is closely parallel to the original sin of the 
earlier theologians. We postpone the consideration 
1 See pp. 143-150. 



between God and Man 139 

of this point until the end of this chapter, but it is 
necessary to refer here to the conclusion to which we 
shall come. The race being affected, the act of any 
man, or as we shall see, even of all men, could not 
re-establish it. Perfection has by man's own act 
passed eternally out of his reach. 

If then any re-union is possible, God must do what 
man cannot do ; man must do what God cannot do — 
cannot, because God cannot contradict Himself : He 
cannot give man freedom and then withdraw it. 

It is along these lines that we shall seek, not to 
solve the problem, but very tentatively, very reverently, 
to suggest one or two paths along which thought may 
pass towards a partial understanding of one aspect of 
the central Fact of the World's history. George Mac- 
donald in his novel Malcolm puts these very wise words 
into the mouth of the schoolmaster : " If I knew of a 
theory in which was never an uncompleted arch or 
turret, in whose circling wall was never a ragged breach, 
that theory I should know but to avoid ; such gaps are 
the eternal windows through which the dawn shall look 
in. A complete theory is a vault of stone around the 
theorist — whose very being yet depends on room to 
grow." 

It is clear that no contradiction is involved between 
the fundamentals of sin and Atonement, as they appear 
when examined from the standpoint we have adopted, 
and as they appear to the theologian. Both agree in 



140 The Effect of Individual 

the absolute finality of the schism introduced into the 
cosmos by wilful sin ; both agree that only by the 
co-operation of God and man can the schism be healed. 
But in one way our view of sin differs from that of the 
theologian, or of some theologians, in making the 
schism between God and man seem even more hope- 
lessly incapable of healing, for we have said that even 
the Spirit of God cannot make it as though it was not. 
The will of man must co-operate with the Will of God : 
only by the combined action of man and God, free and 
untrammelled on both sides, is any re-union even 
possible. This seems to point towards Auselm's view 
that God was not able to choose freely the method of 
Redemption, being limited by the necessity of the co- 
operation of man's will ; and we shall find that our 
argument seems rather to suggest the strict Anselmian 
doctrine that the Death of Christ was the only possible 
means. It is incumbent on us however, especially in 
view of the limited scope of our discussion involved in 
the method adopted, to state clearly that so tremendous 
a doctrine is only put forward tentatively. 

One point that has emerged very clearly in the 
course of the foregoing argument is that sin is an 
individual thing. The will that is set in opposition to 
the Divine Will is not primarily the will of the human 
race, but the wills of human persons. The sin there- 
fore is not the sin of the race, but of the person. 






Sin on the Race 141 

We have yet to examine the effect of individual sin 
on the race. True, we showed that when a race as a 
whole over-specialises in wrong directions, or fails to 
progress, by the action of the inevitable law of develop- 
ment it must perish ; and also that the surrender of a 
nation's ideals, the dedication to luxury or vice of any 
large percentage of its members, is for that nation the 
beginning of the end. But we have not considered the 
question of the effect of the sins of men upon the 
human race as a whole. Yet these cannot but be of 
consequence. Every man at some time or another 
chooses to do something w^hich he knows is not right, 
decides with open eyes to follow a course of action 
which he knows is not the best, because it is easier or 
pleasanter. Every member of the human race is tainted 
with sin, and so is alienated from God. What follows ? 
Not physical death. Death was the worst evil known 
to men who had no clear belief in immortality ; for 
whom it meant extinction or vague wandering in a 
misty land of banishment ; to whom the knowledge of 
God seemed only possible while they were in the flesh ; 
and to such, death naturally seemed the consequence of 
sin. But to us, who know more of the wonders of 
God's working, death is not so terrible. We know now 
that it is an essential part of the great Progress by 
which will triumphs and is perfected. 

The book Genesis is an allegory of the dawn, and 
in it we find the World a Garden, into which death and 



1 42 Race-consciousness 

sorrow find entrance by man's sin. The Bible ends 
with another allegory ; in it the World is a City. 
There too death is the consequence of sin, but it is not 
physical death ; it is the second Death — banishment 
from God, and everlasting bitterness. Not extinction : 
modern thought leads us to believe that the extinction 
of personality is impossible, and this is certainly the 
teaching of Christ. This is far worse — the death of the 
power of becoming like God, the eternal impossibility 
of entering into the communion of Love. There are 
many stages of progress, many scenes of trial ; but at 
length the new city, foursquare and glorious, the type 
of perfection, descends from Heaven. Humanity is 
made complete and dwells with God. But some can 
never enter into the Holy City ; nothing unclean can 
enter in : for those who are banished by, not for, but 
by, their sins there is the second Death. 

The Bible, that wonderful text-book of Evolution, 
then teaches that death is the consequence of sin — but 
it is the death of the soul — not the death of the body. 

And biological science teaches us that race-extinc- 
tion is the consequence of failure to progress. The 
argument of the preceding chapters, carrying this 
farther, shows that voluntary inertia and the dedication 
to low ideals alike spell ruin for the nation. Moreover 
for the individual, sin means alienation from God, and 
every individual man sins. 

What then of the whole human race ? Is it just or 



Sin 143 

reasonable to speak of race-sin ? While there is no 
race-indetermination, there can be no race-sin : nothing 
worthy of punishment, that is. There will only be 
consequences. And we have seen that, for life as a 
whole, there is no indetermination. The life marches 
on, unfaltering, towards freedom. Races fail, and are 
thrust aside, but others spring up to take their place. 

None the less, each individual race has some of 
the characteristics of a definite entity, possessing a 
sort of consciousness together with traces of inde- 
termination. We must nevertheless remember that 
unless there is ^/-consciousness, unless there is the 
actual recognition of an end in the being or entity 
itself, which end may be achieved more rapidly by 
voluntary effort, there can be no moral import in 
action, and so there can be no sin. Whether a group 
or race can ever be said to become self-conscious, 
whether there is such a thing as national self-conscious- 
ness apart from the minds of the component individuals, 
or whether the hive-consciousness is in any degree self- 
consciousness, is at the very least unproven. And we 
saw reason to think that if it exists at all, it cannot 
reach any but the most elementary stage of develop- 
ment (see p. 137 supra). 

But none the less the human race is doomed as a 
whole, since men as a whole have set their will against 
progress. Perhaps this statement requires some further 
explanation. We have seen that every man has sinned, 



144 Race-alienation from God 

and sin is wholly antipathetic to the nature of God. 
But progress is now in the mental and spiritual plane, 
as far as man is concerned, and is tending ever towards 
spirituality ; therefore by this alienation from God the 
final achievement of spiritual perfection is delayed, or 
rather rendered impossible. In these last words lies 
the answer to the objection that might be raised that 
one or two small sins, or even big ones, on the part of 
every single human being, would not necessarily imply 
that the whole tendency of the race was anti-progressive, 
that the vital impulse was being checked and stifled. 
Just as a small variation in a race of organisms / 
down in the scale may, if not commit that race to a 
definite line of advance, at any rate make some other 
line of advance for ever impossible ; so here, the < 
mission of sins makes the end for which progress exists, 
complete union with God, for ever itnpossihle, since 
the attainment of perfection is no longer open to a race 
which has in it the taint of something that is positively, 
not negatively, imperfect. And all men sin. 

This statement in regard to the biological nature 
of " Original Sin " seems perhaps open to grave ob- 
jection, and requires a somewhat more detailed analysis 
to justify it. 

The general reader may say " still I do not see how 
the sinful tendency comes to be characteristic of the 
whole race, though I quite see that if it does, the race 
has entered upon a line of evolution that can never lead 



Economics of Progress 145 

it to perfection." The biologist will say " Surely this in- 
troduces the inheritance of acquired characters : I cannot 
accept any theory with such a questionable basis." 

Closer examination however shows that the con- 
clusion reached is perfectly justified. We may present 
our argument in the following way. 

In the lower stages over-specialisation inevitably 
leads to equilibrium in the long run. The possibility 
of such over-specialisation lies in the phenomena of 
variation and heredity. The organism varies, and 
where there is room in the economy of nature — where, 
in other words, the conditions are suitable for the 
formation of a " closed system " through the develop- 
ment of a group of adapted organisms — there it finds 
a resting place. The pressure of other organisms urges 
towards the filling of any lacunae. The group persists 
for a time, and is at last swept away and replaced by 
another group or " closed system " adapted to a larger 
range of conditions. Further, since all animals depend 
on other animals, and on plants, for sustenance, it is 
necessary that there should be these side lines of pro- 
gress, in order that development along the main line 
may be possible. Though the over-adapted organism 
is doomed, through the hampering of the vital impulse, 
yet the doom of the many is needed for the success of 
the few. In variation an element of purposiveness 
is found 1 . There is an attempt to escape equilibrium 

1 See pp. 20, 121. 

M. 10 



146 Sin an Acquired Character 

by variation ; but generally environment, including the 
struggle for existence, is too strong, and variations 
leading to eventual equilibrium are adopted. 

The basis of the whole is the fact that true variations 
are inherited. 

On the other hand the sin of a man is an " acquired 
character." We cannot say that the sin is hereditary — 
that it will reappear in the next generation. Nor can 
we say with any degree of confidence that the misuse 
of freedom entailed will directly produce a tendency 
to misuse freedom under the like circumstances in future 
generations, any more than we can say that the child 
of a navvy will tend to develop more horny hands than 
the child of a scholar when both are put to the same 
manual labour. At any rate the work .of Weismann 
on the inheritance of acquired characters, if not 
absolutely conclusive, renders it in the highest degree 
inadvisable to build on so doubtful a foundation. 
The most we can say on the physical side is that the 
offspring of generations of navvies may perhaps tend 
to possess greater physical strength than the descendant 
of a long line of scholars ; and even to this we can give 
but a qualified assent, for an ingrained aptitude pro- 
bably initiated the line of navvies as well as the line 
of scholars. Looked at from this point of view our 
problem offers insuperable difficulties. 

And we cannot say that sin is necessary to the progress 
of the race, or that the sin of one tribe aids the progress 



Primitive Sins against the Community 147 

of another. Here again is a distinct difference between 
man and the lower organisms. Yet it is clear that there 
is an element of purposiveness in the lower creatures, 
urging towards escape from equilibrium ; and that in 
man we have volition directed towards the same end. 

When we consider what will be the nature of 
the sins of primitive men the issue becomes clearer, 
and we gain an insight into the solution. For it is 
evident that they will be sins against the common 
good. As we have seen, the origin of ethics is almost 
certainly to be sought in communal necessity. It is 
idle to say in this matter that many sins can only be 
known to the man himself, for we are at present 
concerned with origins, and the sins of primitive man 
must necessarily be of an elementary nature — greed, 
theft, offences against tribal sex-regulations and the 
like — and must inevitably affect others. They will 
be offences against the community. 

Now the fact that the man who steals from the 
tribe and is found out, is punished, entails a publicity 
which will suggest to others the possibility of stealing 
and not being found out. Further, the need for not 
being found out gives at once the basis for the idea that 
stealing, being bad for the tribe, is wrong. A certain 
furtiveness and secrecy creeps in. In the future, 
thefts are committed with full recognition of their na- 
ture, by reflective beings who understand the meaning 
of their acts. The fact that a man can satisfy the 

10—2 



148 Natural Selection in the Animal Community 

pressing demands of his anti-social, and therefore 
lower, instincts without necessarily suffering any im- 
mediate disadvantage or punishment is a strong 
incentive to others to follow a like course. The 
misdirection of the vital impulse in an individual 
creates a new environmental factor that tends to 
promote a similar misdirection in others — indeed, 
to make it almost inevitable. And so sin on the part 
of one will tend towards the undoing of all. 

But we can go further than this. 

In the lower stains wo have said that development 
along wrong lines is conditioned by the interaction 
of variation and heredity with the environment, 
and the only element of purposiveness is to be found 
in the impulse that underlies variation. This is 
obvious in the ordinary rases of adaptation. But 
we may apply it also to the more puzzling case of animal 
communities. If a colonial animal is guilty of anti- 
social acts he is slain. But we have no evidence that 
he had any consciousness of better and worse : any 
realisation that his action was bad for the community. 
Almost certainly it is a question of two blind impulses 
warring with one another — desire or hunger, and fear. 
He does not choose which he shall obey: he obeys the 
stronger. And, since those with whom immediate desire 
is the stronger are slain, natural selection ensures that 
only those in whom fear is the more potent influence 
shall survive. 



Cessation of Selection in Man 149 

But in man there is self-consciousness and volition. 
If a man commits an anti-social act it is not conditioned 
merely by the strife between blind impulses of desire 
and fear, though these are present. Superadded is 
the element of consciousness ; the realisation of what 
he is doing. And his fellows are able in some measure 
to argue out the pros and cons of such an act, and to 
determine their own actions in the light of this know- 
ledge. Thus it comes about that men, under the 
stimulus of example, and of their own ingenuity, 
commit the same, and other, offences. The stimulus 
towards sin becomes a constant factor in their en- 
vironment. The possibility of success in the grati- 
fication of immediate desire is manifest, and so the 
tendency to act contrary to the higher impulses — 
recognised as higher by this very means — becomes 
ingrained in the race. Men are set free from the over- 
mastering stimulus of fear by volitional ingenuity, 
and their energy becomes misdirected. Freedom of 
choice, together with the presentation of right and 
wrong action before the minds of men, leads to sin. 
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil has yielded 
its fruits : the realisation that man can eat forbidden 
fruit and yet live, has introduced a new mental factor 
into his environment. 

There is now in some degree a cessation of selection. 
The process by which the animals that committed 
anti-social acts were weeded out is checked. The men 



150 Cessation of Selection in Man 

who have a tendency to sin — in whom the need for 
gratification of immediate desire is overmastering, 
where the risk of discovery is not too great — are not 
so rigorously eliminated. 

Therefore the race tends more and more to contain 
" sinful " men, in this primitive application of the word. 
And so sin, or rather the tendency to sin, becomes 
hereditary in the race, not by the inheritance of ac- 
quired characters, but by the creation of an environ- 
ment which acts, on a community of self-conscious 
beings, towards the cessation of selection of those with 
the higher instincts. The race is misdirected in its 
development. Sin, from being anti-social, as in its 
primitive form, becomes more and more complex as 
the mind and spirit of man develop. There is 
progress, yet man is debarred from perfection by 
inherent sin. 

So far then three points have emerged clearly in 
regard to sin in the individual and the race. 

(1) The individual has sinned, and can only be 
re-united to God by his own free act and will. 

(2) Such re-union is impossible for him, because 
he is tainted with positive evil, which can never have ' 
place in God's Love. 

(3) The whole human race also is for ever alienated 
from God, being imbued with the taint of imperfection, 
which makes impossible the destined growth of the 
race to perfection. It is imperfect now, for the present 



Summary 151 

stage, and all future stages of progress will be tainted 
with the same imperfection. 

It will be seen that in this last we have something 
closely analogous to the somewhat discredited doctrine 
of Original Sin. And this something is quite different 
from Tennant's negative description of it as the in- 
herited passions and tendencies of our brute-ancestry. 
It is positive ; not exactly race-sin ; but race-alienation 
from God. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE ATONEMENT 

Wk must now torn more directly to the quest: 
of the Atonement. M The whole creation groaneth and 
travaileth together until now, ...and o I also... 

waiting for the adoption, to wit the redemption of our 
body," says St Paul. And again, u For I know that in 
me, that is, in my flesh, dwdleth no good thing : for to 
will is present with me, but to do that which is good is 
not." And again, by implication, " Now ie the myi 
of evil revealed in the body 1 ." It is in and through the 
body that the soul has sinned ; it is the body that is 
being dragged up in opposition to the cosmic forces of 
decay amid which it moves. If then the plan of God, 
that man should grow into the likeness of God by 
gradual achievement of freedom from the trammels 
of his material life, is to be perfected i] of failure 

and sin, it is in the body that redemption must come. 
The mystery of evil has been revealed in the body : in 
the body then good must be revealed, triumphant and 
victorious. But how I We shall find some guidance if 
we think over the conclusions we have formed about 

1 Cf. Rom. vii. and 2 ThMB. ii. 



Tiro Possibilities of Atonement 153 

the nature of sin. By sin, which is in its effect equivalent 
to the acceptance of equilibrium among the beasts, the 
progress of man is checked. But there is more. Just 
as a step in the physically " wrong " direction meant 
a limited physical evolution for the beast, terminating 
sooner or later in a cul-de-sac ; so sin, which is a step in 
the morally " wrong " direction, means a limited moral 
evolution for man, terminating in a cul-de-sac which is 
inevitable moral and spiritual imperfection. In both 
cases the vital impulse must eventually meet with some- 
thing that bars further progress, and, unprogressing, die. 

The only hope lies either in the upspringing of a 
new vital impulse which is not hampered and blocked, 
or else in the freeing of man from the consequences of 
his own wrong acts. 

The first alternative we may dismiss. Obviously it 
is equivalent to an interruption of the whole process by 
which freedom has been reached. A new vital impulse 
means the supersession, ultimately the destruction, of 
the soul of evolution. The unity of the thread that 
runs through it all is destroyed at once. No one can 
say that this is impossible. But it involves a solution 
of continuity in the plan of God. True, it is due to 
man's sin, and so it may be said that the continuity 
has already been destroyed by man. In a sense this is 
the case ; but to admit it does not entail such con- 
sequences as the above demands. To say that God 
accepts the destruction of His original plan, and is 



154 Two Possibilities of Atonement 

compelled to acquiesce in the final impossibility of 
oneness and uniformity in the process by which man 
is to learn to know Him and grow to be like Him, 
at least involves us in very grave difficulties. Any 
other explanation that does not lead to such difficulties 
is surely to be preferred 1 . 

The second alternative raises no such problem. If 
we have argued truly, sin, like every other evolutionary 
" mistake," restricts the possibilities of development, so 
that eventually man must fall victim to the forces of 
determination : actually, if a fitter race ousts him ; 
practically, if he survives physically, but reaches a stage 
where further progress — in his case probably moral or 
spiritual — is blocked. But if by any means the self- 
imposed check on his freedom could be removed, the 
consequences of his sin would be done away, and if, and 
only if, his will was set towards progress, lie would be 
able to go forward as if the tin had never been. Here 
is no limitation of man's freedom. His will is needed : 
he can only go forward in his spiritual development 
by his own effort. But he is no longer debarred from 

1 The rejection of this first alternative does not 
objected by one critic) exclude either the vivifying stimulus of the 
example of Christ, or Divine Grace. The point we are emphasising 
here is that, for the sake of continuity, the stimulus must act in moll 
a way as neither to infringe the freedom won by man nor to minimise 
the value of the past stages of evolution. The possibility of perfection 
must be restored by an act of the Grace of God, which yet leaves 
continuity unimpaired (vide infra). 



Principles for a Theory of Atonement 155 

the attainment of perfection. The imperfection which 
we saw in the last chapter had become inherent in 
him is now no longer an essential part of his nature. 
Negatively he is not perfect, but he is no longer 
positively imperfect : he is not debarred from attain- 
ing perfection eventually. And so the barrier between 
God and man is done away. 

Man then could regain the potentiality of absolute 
perfectness, if on the one hand God by some means 
freed him from the " consequences " of his sin, and on 
the other hand he himself set his own will towards 
perfection. We are then faced with the question — 
What means could God adopt (I speak it reverently) 
to give him this freedom ? 

Three points must be borne in mind : 

(1) That individually men are tainted with sin. 

(2) That " positive" imperfection has become a 
taint in the race. 

(3) That the will of man must be unhampered. 
As we have said, this last points to the Anselmian 

position that God is not wholly free to choose the 
method of Atonement. He is limited to something 
that, while blotting out the consequences of sin, may 
yet arouse man's will to ideals and effort. 

Now it is obviously true that the answer to the 
whole question must be sought in the plane of spiritual 
things. We have seen how the response of the organ- 
ism to its environment has gradually shifted from the 



156 Principles for a Theory of Atonement 

physical to the spiritual plane, until by now physical 
progress in man has almost ceased. The problem with 
which we are now confronted is, and has always been 
regarded as, a purely spiritual one ; and we can only 
seek its solution in the realm of spiritual things. But 
if our argument up to this point has been just ; if we 
are right in our belief that the cosmic environment is 
essentially spiritual and that only the organism which 
grows to respond most fully to this environment can 
be truly said to be successful ; further, if we can only 
find a meaning in life when we interpret it in this 
manner ; then surely there is no possible objection 
to our attacking the problem from the other — the 
spiritual — end. Having argued that there is complete 
continuity between the physical and spiritual growth, 
there can be no inconsistency in following the universal 
precedent by dealing with the last stage of our argu- 
ment from the spiritual standpoint. There may appear 
to be a superficial break in sequence, but we shall 
really only be taking up the other end of the Ariadne- 
thread along which the living organism, entombed and 
constrained in the dark mazes of the earth in which it 
had birth, has been feeling its way out into the freedom 
of heaven. The thread is one, and we shall reach the 
point at which man lost his hold of it. 

It is in and through the body that the soul has 
sinned — the body, in and through which the soul has 
come to be ; and it is in and through the body that 



The Atonement a Mystery 157 

redemption must come if there is to be continuity. 
It must come in and through the body by the opera- 
tion of man's will ; but first it must come in and 
through the body by the operation of God's grace. 

To attempt any full discussion of the true meaning of 
the Atoning Death of Christ would be wholly outside the 
avowed intention of this book. And even if itwere not so, 
it would be an act of unpardonable presumption when so 
much that is great has been written. In its fulness, this 
must always lie beyond the thoughts of man : " We can 
but gaze at the outer fringe of His tabernacle." Even 
so, the thought of nearly two thousand years has made 
clear and intelligible much that was too difficult for our 
forefathers in the faith ; in the books to which we have 
referred, and many more, we have a vast treasure-house 
of noble thought and patient search. As the years go 
on, and new discoveries open up new vistas to new 
generations, the mind of man perceives new wonders in 
the great Mystery. We are always proving its breadth, 
length, depth, and height, for, in whatever direction 
human thought is moving, fresh light comes as the 
Atonement is examined in connection with the new 
knowledge. This emerged very clearly as we reviewed 
the history and development of the Atonement doctrine. 

The best approach to understanding which man 
has yet reached is to be found in such works as those 
of Moberly and Lofthouse. Our main purpose is not 
to set forth an attempted explanation of the method 



158 Pai/f 

by which Christ's death frees men from their sins, but 
to show that a re-union between God and man was 
needed, even if sin is but an evolutionary wi mistake " — is 
in a sense the anachronistic survival of brute instincts. 
The death of Christ is an historic fact : its significance 
is accepted by all Christian peoples : in some manner 
it reconciles man with God. For us this is enough. 

But although these things are outside the limit- 
have set ourselves, yet it is important that we should 
consider some points in the Passion of the Saviour with 
regard to their bearing on the theory we have formu- 
lated of the evolutionary nature of sin ; not aiming 
at a complete theory, but briefly setting out a f< 
thoughts that seem si <\ 

Christ suffered and was buried. Pain and death w 
necessary to progress, as they had always been. His life 
and death constituted the apotheosis of pain, showing it 
in its true light as the only possible means of progress. 
By His life and death alike He showed how false was 
any hope that man might be exempt from the groaning 
and travailing, from the birth-pangs of new powers 
and new ideals. There is no rest and no ease for that 
which is becoming. Only when that which is perfect 
is come shall that which is in part be done away, and 
with it the dissatisfied yearnings of the spirit that is 
seeking to wrest itself free from the trammels of the 
past. In this too Christ showed Himself true man : the 
Crown of manhood, yet the Man of sorrows ; making 



Pain 159 

clear revelation that even perfect Man was not finished. 
We know that even He was not free from the limita- 
tions imposed by humanity. 

The spirit of man must still be liberated from 
bondage. Matter, limited and determined, in which 
he had come to be, must be left behind at the last, 
and the free spirit must enter into full communion 
with the Spirit that gave it power to be. Until then 
man could never be perfect, never satisfied, never 
wholly free from strife and pain. " Touch Me not, for 
I am not yet ascended to My Father," said the Risen 
Saviour. Do not these words mean that no spirit is 
perfected until it has thrown off the ties of earth and 
has entered into full communion with the Father 
of Spirits ? By Himself entering into the pangs of 
spirit fettered by matter ; the nightmare-struggle of the 
creature, reaching out into the Beyond and always held 
back ; the unceasing grapple with limitations ; God 
becomes one with His creation. Union could only be 
perfected so : the Incarnation was part of the world- 
plan of God from the beginning, as the Scotists taught ; 
and the Incarnation must be a fcevooats, must be full 
of pain. So pain receives its true appreciation, and 
sentimental hedonism is for ever discredited. Job has 
his answer. To the student of history, as to the 
student of biology, the statement that ease and certainty 
presage decay is a commonplace. Time after time is 
this set forth in the story of the Nations. A wave of 



160 Pain 

materialism sweeps in upon the over-prosperous com- 
munity ; luxury merges into licence ; spirituality dies, 
morality declines ; unless some vivifying stress inter- 
venes, the very life of the community is endangered. 
As with the beasts, so with men : struggle leading 
to higher things is the condition of survival. Spiri- 
tual faculties and spiritual insight flourish in the 
atmosphere of strife and pain. And Christ came to share 
humanity with men ; to teach the dignity and true 
worth of suffering, and by revelation of the Personality 
of God, to reveal the completeness of the Union that 
was to be. Pain is not the result of sin, but the con- 
dition of progress. Where there is incompleteness 
there must be pain, as we have said, and is the Incar- 
nation God identifies Himself, in the Person of His 
Son, with the pain of the world's becoming. 

But there was no need for the isolation of man from 
God. There was no need for that terrible cry, "Eloi, 
Eloi, lama sabachthani." That was the consequence of 
sin. All the unnecessary, retrogressive pain of sin was 
borne by Christ beside : not only the necessary pain of 
becoming, full of hope and promise, but the appalling, 
hopeless pain of isolation 1 . 

1 I have allowed the foregoing passage to stand exactly as it 
appeared in the first edition. But it is quite clear that it requires 
a certain amount of modification, as it deals with one aspect of the 
problem as if it were the whole. Dr McTaggart, in a letter to myself, 
formulated the objection very clearly. " I doubt if pain is a necessary 
consequence of imperfection. Of course we are all imperfect, and 



Pain 161 

We have seen that the only hope lies in the freeing 
of man from the consequences of his sin, and not in an 
act of God by which the whole meaning and value, 
because the whole continuity, of the previous evo- 
lutionary process is rendered nugatory. God cannot 

none of us free from pain. But I should have thought that we all 
had various imperfections which did not pain us. Again, I doubt 
if pain is always a necessary condition of progress, though no doubt 
it often is so. Suppose a man in heaven who should continually 
increase in knowledge and devotion. Could not this process be free 
from pain ? Even here, do we not sometimes progress without pain ? 
I don't think this affects your main argument, as of course it would 
remain possible that this particular step could only be made through 
pain." 

The validity of this criticism is obvious, and demands an expan- 
sion of the passage in question. 

The point which I intended to bring out was this : Pain as we know 
it may be subdivided under two heads, progressive and retrogressive. 

The first is the inevitable consequence of development based 
on struggle. Where lower ends and impulses have to be sub- 
ordinated to higher, because of the need of progress, there must be 
a sense of loss and pain. Where lower races have to be sacrificed 
to higher, there must be pain. Pain is the by-product of a struggle 
between the anabolic and katabolic forces, and so is the condition 
of progress. Absence of pain connotes absence of advance. The 
lower impulses must suffer through the growth of the higher. 

The second is the retrogressive pain of sin ; the sense of failure and 
dissatisfaction when the higher impulses are subordinated to the lower. 

As far as it goes, I believe this analysis to be correct. And the 
statement that " Pain is not the result of sin, but the condition of 
progress," as applied to the first subdivision, is true, though it should 
be qualified by the addition of the words " for this stage." True 
freedom can only be won by struggle, by the constant exercise of 
choice (vide pp. 163-164) and this struggle must be full of pain. 
But when the struggle-period is over a new mode of progress 

M. 11 



162 Freedom inviolable 

contradict Himself by, so to speak, taking man up 
and setting him on the right road again, for this would 
be an abrogation of the freedom of development. 
Indeed such an act, were it thinkable, would stultify 
itself, for man, not being free, could not love. Yet, 
on the other hand, this freeing from the consequences 
of sin must in a sense be a gift from outside, for man 
cannot free himself. There has been a certain inter- 
ruption in the continuity of the process which marks 
the growth of the soul, for man has, through sin, 
voluntarily set bounds to his own development. It 
would seem then that the Atonement must be something 

supersedes the old. There are two grades of progress, development 
and assimilation. 

The development-system is in its essence the winning of freedom ; 
it is with this, and this alone, that the present book is concerned. 
The assimilation-system gradually replaces the first. The will is 
now steadfastly " set on righteousness," or progress : the ends of 
lower worth seem of no worth at all : their attraction is gone, because 
the knowledge of the meaning of retrogressive pain, the penalty of 
sin, outweighs any possible validity they might have. Thus struggle 
is gone, and the pain of it is replaced by a yearning after righteousness 
that is free from pain because of the certainty of fulfilment. Man 
becomes more and more assimilated to God. And this must be the 
nature of progress in heaven. 

Even in our present life we have experience of this assimilative 
process. To the schoolboy, the acquisition of knowledge is painful : 
the development of his mind is a struggle, because amusement gratifies 
a more immediate, if a lower, demand of his nature. To the mature 
mind thought and the acquisition of knowledge afford the keenest 
delight it knows. To the ordinary man his religious life is a constant, 
painful strife ; to the saint there are times when there is no sense of 
struggle, only the yearning of assimilative progress. 



Creation a Kenosis of the Godhead 163 

that transforms this interruption into a check, which 
may be passed without permanently impairing the 
continuity of evolution. 

We cannot insist too strongly that the freedom of 
man must be left untouched. It is freedom which he 
has won for himself in part, but it is also built on the 
foundation of the struggle of life through countless 
generations, each new generation adding something 
to the building — adding moreover progressively. The 
gift must therefore be something placed before man, 
to take or leave as his will prompts him. It must have 
in it nothing which compels acceptance. 

The creation itself was a kenosis of the Godhead 
in time. The eternal, transcendent God limited Him- 
self in the creation of the conditions under which 
freedom was to be won by His creation. And neces- 
sarily so, for it was freedom that was to be won — a 
true freedom that could be the basis of love. For if 
it be the case, as St John says, that fear and love cannot 
coexist, it is equally certain that compulsion and love 
cannot be cause and effect. 

And freedom, when it eventuates as volition (which, 
pace the philosophers, we have called freewill, to 
emphasise the continuity of volitional with non- 
volitional freedom), implies choice. Therefore the 
possibility of wrong choice, which, when it is conscious, 
is sin, was an inevitable condition of the evolution 
of the will that should be perfectly free. 

11—2 



164 The Incarnation and Passion 

Freedom is won, not given, in that which is finite ; 
and the method is through the struggle of life with the 
forces of its material surroundings— the struggle 
between the anabolic and katabolic principles. 

Whether any other form of struggle could possibly 
give freedom we do not know. Two things we can be 
certain of : that freedom must be won, and won only 
through struggle 1 ; and that our freedom is won in 
the struggle between the vital impulse and the material 
environment, which struggle is full of pain, and full 
of the possibility of failure. The creature must crroan 
and travail, and must work out its own salvation. 

And so it was that, with the achievement of free- 
will came the dawn of sin, which must separate 
eternally from God, under the old order. 

The self-limitation of the Godhead has ended in 
this, and God's will seems to be frustrated. 

But it is not so. 

The first kenosis, the creation, was an act of love, 
by which God willed to suffer, since the pain of a world's 
becoming is part of His experience, in order that other 
spirits might come into being to share the perfectness 
of the deathless communion of Love. He willed to 
become unable, Who was able for all things. He 
willed to become constrained by what He Himself 

1 Cf. the treatment of the psychology of habit by modern writers, 
e.g. William James. Right habits achieved by struggle set the 
consciousness free for higher effort. 



a second Kenosis of the Godhead 165 

had willed should come into being. He entered the 
categories of time and space, while yet transcending 
all categories in His very essence, that the beings 
which should come to birth might also at length 
transcend those categories 1 . 

Was there not then a possibility, when man had 
barred himself out from what he could have become, 
that, by a second act of love, also a kenosis, the barrier 
might be removed ? 

Suppose God were to enter still further into the 
categories of time and space ? Suppose He accepted 
in His own Person the full penalty that sin had made 
inevitable ? Suppose, sinless Himself, He became in 
very fact Man, born into the full consequences of race- 
failure, living as man, dying as man, suffering complete 
alienation from freedom and immortality as man ? 

In His timeless or transcendent aspect He is 
eternal ; but as Man, in time and space, suppose He 
accepts the last limitation ? 

To what do such suppositions lead us ? 

Certainly this is a second kenosis, differing from the 
first in that it is the voluntary acceptance of the con- 
sequences of the misdirection of will in man. The 
first kenosis was the acceptance of the limitations 
imposed by the existence of other beings, who should 
not be compelled, whatever line their blind struggle 

1 I hope to deal at more length with the metaphysical implica- 
tions of these views in a subsequent volume. 



166 Atonement tvrought through Christ's 

for freedom took. It was, if we may reverently- 
express it so, an agreement of God with Himself, not 
to interfere, for the sake of the potential perfection 
that the potentiality of progress involved. 

The second kenosis was the acceptance of the 
voluntary misuse of the powers which progress had 
brought, and all its consequences — acceptance of the 
results of a choice of that which was not free in pre- 
ference to that which tended towards greater freedom. 
It was the acceptance, not only of the necessary pain 
of becoming, but of the penalty of failure. It was the 
complete identification of the Godhead in Christ with 
the process of development, as Head of the human 
race ; but it was also the identification of God with 
the failure of that process, in time, and under the then 
conditions. And so it must have been an unique act. 
God could not do more than identify Himself with man. 
And He could not do it more than once, for in the 
Resurrection of Jesus the temporal is swallowed up 
in the eternal. The Risen Jesus was no longer limited 
within the conditions of time and space, as we read 
in the Gospels ; and we see that He could not be, for 
He was no longer Man, but the fulness and perfectness 
of what man should be in the timeless. 

As man He had undergone the uttermost suffering 
of the soul barred out from what it knew to be good. 
For if the creature suffered extinction as the conse- 
quence of failure to progress in the dim ages before 



self-identification tvith fallen Humanity 167 

self-consciousness, the self-conscious creature must 
suffer the agony of knowing that he has set a bar to 
his progress by his sin. It is the knowledge of conse- 
quences that is the punishment of sin. And may not 
we interpret the cry of loneliness from the Cross as the 
full entering into this knowledge by Jesus ? 

An unique act, for, just as by a limitation of His 
freedom, God gave the potentiality of freedom to the 
creature in the first creation, so in the second creation, 
by identifying Himself in the Person of Christ with the 
creature limited by the misuse of His first gift, He 
" empties Himself " of freedom in time and space. 

Then, passing through the gate of death, after a 
fashion rendered shameful by the wickedness of the 
men among whom He moved, in virtue of His personal 
sinlessness He re-enters the realm of the eternal, and 
so opens the possibility of perfectness to men, even 
through the barrier of isolation. 

Isolated from God by the sin of the world, with 
which world He becomes wholly one ; shut out from 
the full communion of the Godhead, He yet redeems 
mankind in re-entering the realm of His own omni- 
potence and transcendence. 

And here we are brought face to face with the old 
problem : how can the Death of Christ save men ? 
It is a problem we cannot hope to solve in full, because 
it is of the infinite and simultaneous, as well as of the 
temporal and finite. But we can arrive at a partial 



168 Union with God through 

understanding of the temporal aspect, and, for the 
completeness of the edifice of thought we have been 
building, we must try to comprehend that side of it 
which bears on the evolution of the souls of men. 

Jesus was truly the Man of Sorrows, for He had 
always with Him the knowledge that He bore on His 
shoulders the sin of the world ; He had always the 
knowledge that the time of awful realisation, in His 
Own Person, of the isolation of manhood by that sin 
must come. Yet He was willing to drink the bitter 
dregs of the cup which the love of the Father had set 
before Him. He was willing to identify Himself to 
the uttermost with fallen man. He, God, underwent 
in time that last limitation of complete isolation from 
the perfect union of love. But because He was already 
God, eternal and timeless, it was only in time that 
the union was forfeited. 

He could never again come, as man, to show forth 
the complete union of man with God. That coming, 
which the Scotists believe was inherent in the Creation ; 
which was to be the final ending of the limitation which 
the act of creation had entailed, because it was to show 
the wills of God and man united and made perfectly 
one, without clash of interests or desires ; that union 
which was to be the completion of God's will for the 
world in time, as well as the translation of the union 
into the eternal, was for ever made impossible. 

Instead of it was a coming full of pain ; a coming 



Union with Christ 169 

in which the Incarnate God took into His own Being, 
in some manner which we cannot comprehend, though 
we can begin to apprehend it, the limitation of manhood, 
making it a limitation of the Godhead, as far as that 
Godhead was Incarnate. And this acceptance of 
limitation, this kenosis of the Godhead, makes it possible 
again for man to become what he would have become 
but for sin — capable of union with God, if he will 
accept the gift it brings. His freedom is still his own 
and untouched ; he can reject the offered good if he will. 
And we can see something of the line along which 
thought must move towards an understanding of the 
mode. For what does all we have said come to ? 
That man has sinned with his will, and, so sinning, 
has made it impossible for his will to develop into 
perfect union with the will of the Father. Therefore 
the Godhead assumes the flesh of fallen man, as Christ. 
Christ is perfect man, yet with all the limitations of 
manhood as it is. And man is drawn to Him, and can 
enter into perfect union with Him, for He is of the same 
nature, and no barrier separates man from Him. Union 
between man and the Godhead self-limited as Christ in 
human flesh is possible ; and when this union is per- 
fectly consummated, by the whole-hearted acceptance 
of Christ by man, of His message and mission, and of 
His Person, with all that that entails, it is indissoluble. 
In virtue of His Godhead Christ re-enters the eternal, 
through death, even through the uttermost isolation, 



170 Union with Christ indissoluble, 

having identified Himself wholly with the limitations 
of fallen man, even to the hopeless loneliness of the 
knowledge of self-limitation. And just because the 
union of man with Him may be made complete, as, 
after man's sin, it could not be with the unlimited, 
free God, so man may pass through that same isolation 
into that same eternity with Him. The thing is a 
mystery, deeper than anything but the love of God. 
But we can see that there is the link of the possibility 
of the union of man with the Godhead Incarnate and 
limited, destined to the experience of isolation volun- 
tarily accepted ; and then the drawing through the gulf, 
man being wholly one with Christ, and Christ passing, 
through hopeless death, to the eternal, of which He is. 

We may recall in passing how Jesus loved to i 
and amplify metaphors describing perfected union 
between Himself and His followers. The Vine and its 
branches forms a living whole, indivisible. So too 
St Paul returns constantly to the idea of union with 
Christ, and in Christ with each other, the whole church 
becoming a holy temple fitly framed together, of which 
Christ is the Chief Corner-stone. But we reach the 
greatest realisation of what this thought meant in its 
fulness to our Lord in His last discourses, as reported 
by St John, and in the culminating prayer " that thev 
may all be one ; even as thou, Father, art in me, and 
I in thee, that they also may be one in us" (Jn xvii. 21). 

Truly He hath borne our griefs, aye and our sins. 



transcending Time 171 

Truly no man cometh unto the Father but by Him. 
And truly in Him we pass through death into life. 

And the whole process is in line with the creation : 
that was the first kenosis ; this is the second. " As in 
Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." 
Yet each man has still to work out his own salvation, 
for he must be completely united in will with Christ, 
through the dedication of his own will. 

Just as the spark of the eternal and infinite that is 
expressed in the vital impulse carries the creature 
upwards in and through its struggle with the katabolic, 
death-bringing forces that are all around, which must 
entail death on the individual ; so the Eternal Godhead 
in Christ, the perfect Man, who yet, as man, is doomed 
to isolation, carries His Manhood through the forces 
of inevitable doom, into the freedom of eternity beyond. 
And in union with His Manhood, man can pass through 
with Him. 

Here is no substitution, but identification. Identi- 
fication, not only of God with Manhood, but of manhood 
with the Incarnate God — a reciprocal process. And 
surely this way of looking at the Atonement does not 
minimise that great act of Love ! And I believe it is 
strictly scriptural : it is merely giving definiteness to St 
Paul's teaching about the double kenosis in creation and 
redemption 1 . It is the perfect example of forgiveness. 

1 Indeed the parallel between the whole thesis developed in this 
book and the argument of the earlier part of the Epistle to the Romans 



172 Pluralism resolved 

It is fully consonant with the Doctrine of the Trinity, 
and with our belief in the omnipotence and transcen- 
dence of the eternal God. And I believe it is justifiable 
philosophically, as the fusion of the pluralistic and 
monistic hypotheses, and that it also helps towards 
a solution of the problem of evil, though I do not 
propose to discuss these latter points in the present 
work. At first sight the idea of the limitation of God's 
freedom may seem to involve grave difficulties, but 
I think this is not really the case. 

There are two points to be borne in mind. 

Firstly, the kenoses are both in time, and therefore 
they do not affect the transcendent aspect of God, but 
only, at most, the immanent aspect. And although 
this idea is difficult of comprehension, yet it is an in- 
dubitable fact that in time and matter God is self- 
limited, if there is any meaning in our belief in the 
freedom of life (which in man rises to freewill), and in 
the determination of matter and energy ; and so the 

is very clear, though the starting-points of the two are so different 
that it cannot be pressed in matt its of dot ail. In viii. 18 — 21 we 
have a passage that is at any rate suggestive in connection with the 
idea of the vital impulse. In the law of the members and the law 

of the mind (vii. 23) the upward and downward, or anabolic and 
katabolic, tendencies find a parallel, though of course in most passages 
of this type St Paul is referring more especially to the rigid Law of the 
Covenant. The idea of a struggle for freedom in the creature, with 
its logical corollary of the self-limitation of God, is implicit in the 
whole letter, though the latter point is not dealt with explicitly. 
The second self-limitation is clearly set forth in the doctrine of the 
kenosis (Phil. ii. 6, 7). 



in Union 173 

idea of a second kenosis raises no new difficulty. There 
is already a pluralism in time. 

And secondly (another implication from the 
temporal nature of the kenoses), as man's will becomes 
more and more perfect, it becomes more and more 
consonant with the will of God, as our whole belief 
in evolution towards perfection shows. As man draws 
nearer to perfection, so he enters into closer communion 
with God, and we believe that he too shall eventually 
enter into the category of the timeless or eternal, 
when his will shall be wholly united with the will of 
God ; while yet his personality shall remain in its own 
identity. Thus eventually all limitation of God's 
power is done away, not by the destruction of the 
powers of man, but by the complete alignment of their 
activity with the activity of God. 

More, while God as Christ w^as thus limited in time, 
He was still supreme and omnipotent in eternity. 
In time there is a pluralism, in eternity God is the 
great I AM, with whom the personal souls of men will 
at length be joined in full communion of will and love ; 
no longer a pluralism, in the ordinary sense of the word, 
because their experience will be the experience of God ; 
for them, reality will hold the same content, if only 
partially, as for God. Philosophy, it would seem, is 
more and more moving towards the belief that it is 
along the line of personality rather than in the abstract 
idea of Reality, and of what we call the Absolute, that 



174 Atonement for the Race 

the solution of many of our problems is to be sought. 
And it may even be that in the nature and activities 
of personality, reality consists. 

Thus the race-alienation that has been imposed 
through the misdirection of evolution by past genera- 
tions is done away. The salvation of the race is brought 
about by the salvation of its individual members. 
And we see that this must be the mode, for the progress 
of the race has throughout depended on the trans- 
mission of the vital impulse through the individuals ; 
and when these become self-conscious they hold the 
destiny of the race in their hands, since freedom — 
the mere compelling of matter to subserve ends — has 
become free will. And again, the Atonement for the 
race is revealed as the forgiveness of the individual. 
For it is the sin of the individual that dooms the race 
to imperfection. And the love of God finds a new 
outlet in the self-renunication that places perfection 
once more within reach, in complete union between 
the sinful man and the Godhead Incarnate, a union 
that eventually must transcend time, because God is 
eternal. All the harm and pain that man had wrought 
is forgiven, for the essence of forgiveness is the motion 
of the injured person towards the injurer. The effect 
of race-alienation is obliterated for each individual 
as he accepts the Gift of God. 

********* 

We have investigated the nature of sin at 



Altruism 17 5 

considerable length, and it became clear that, being the 
voluntary renunciation of struggle and discomfort, 
sin is really a kind of over-emphasised individualism. 
The evolutionary process is essentially altruistic : that 
is what Nietzsche forgot. Unconsciously, the indi- 
vidual lives for the race. And the still-unconscious 
rejection of altruism by the members of a race, which 
is implied in the acceptance of equilibrium, is that 
race's undoing. Granted, the whole process is un- 
conscious. Granted, each individual organism responds 
to the stimuli of its environment in such a way as to 
satisfy its own needs. Still, under all lies the fact 
that higher races are reared on the foundations of the 
past. In the vital impulse which urges progress there 
is teleology, and teleology means altruism. And man 
knows and recognises this in his own case. As soon as 
he seeks personal ease and pleasure, not caring for the 
future of the race, he is sinning, for over-individualism 
means ruin to a nation, as he well knows. 

Undoubtedly, evolutionary progress is the triumph 
of altruism. And in the Incarnation this was pointed, 
made clear. But the altruism of God is utterly un- 
limited. Not only does He identify Himself with the 
pain of the world's becoming, in order to complete the 
unity of the spiritual world and to assume before man- 
kind the Headship of all the spiritual hierarchy ; but 
He takes upon Himself the awful burden of suffering 
that sin has brought into the world. And by entering 



176 Freedom of Acceptance 

into His Death in a spiritual manner man accepts the 
underlying altruism of the universe, rejecting for ever 
the idol of individual profit that sin had set up for him 
to worship. 

But, as we have seen, Christ's death meant more 
than this. It was not merely an object-lesson in 
perfect love and self-sacrifice ; it did not merely teach 
men the awful gravity of sin. He did not suffer merely 
in order that we might be exempted from the last 
extremity of suffering. It was not merely that the law 
of righteousness had to be vindicated. The object was 
not merely to draw men back to their allegiance by 
the strength of personal appeal. All these had part in 
that great Act of love, but there was far more. The 
barrier between God and man was done away — how 
we shall never fully understand, though it is clear 
that the mode is through union with the manhood 
of Christ, God and man. In the mystery of the 
Passion Christ identified Himself in the name of the 
whole human race, as its rightful representative and 
head, with the true principle of evolution, its funda- 
mental altruism, and took away the circumscribing wall 
that fettered the free development of man — the wall 
set up by the race-rejection of ideals. He removed the 
taint of sin from the race. But only on one condition. 
The man is free : his will is, and must remain, un- 
fettered by anything except the katabolic forces amid 
which it found birth. Only by willing recognition of 



Freedom of AccepUwice 177 

the great work of Love, only by glad, urgent accept- 
ance of the power of growth into perfect freedom 
conferred in the Redemption, can man attain that union 
with the Godhead for the sake of which, by the struggle 
of countless ages, he has come to be. 

If he accepts, the race barrier is broken down : he 
identifies himself with the world-altruism that Jesus 
came to vindicate, and he is, so, free to put his will to 
the right use, being no longer debarred from perfect- 
ness by his humanity. We see that God has vindicated 
His world-plan in vindicating the altruism that under- 
lies it ; we see that there is no break in the continuity 
of the process by which man is to become like God. 
And man's will is utterly unhampered by the death 
of Christ. He is as free as he was before to seek 
greater freedom, and no freer. He receives none of 
the benefits of the Passion except by using his own 
volition. There has been an intervention in the order 
of things, so to speak, from the outside, but this inter- 
vention has only confirmed the continuity of the world- 
process, and has left man's will untouched. And these, 
we saw, were the needs in the Atonement. 

So far in this chapter we have left the question of 
individual sin almost untouched. Men sin every day. 
If every sin, however small, in any degree limits freedom, 
making imperfection inevitable, these limitations must 
be constantly removed : there must be perpetual atone- 
ment. God's part in the Act of reunion must be 

m. 12 



178 Continued Presentation of the Atonement 

constantly renewed, as well as man's ; so at least it 
would seem. Without presuming to say that this is 
certain or proven, I would point out its suggestive- 
ness when taken in connection with those passages 
in the Bible which represent Christ as continually 
making offering of Himself, of His Passion, for our 
sins : perplexing sayings, which yet must have repre- 
sented some definite thought in the mind of the writer : 
sayings not by any means confined to one or two 
(e.g. Rom. viii. 34 ; Heb. vii. 2:~ ; 1 John ii. 1 and cf. 
Rom. viii. 26, 27)* 

These passages seem to suggest a general consensus 
of belief on the matter. And, taken in the light of 
Moberly's view of the work of the Holy Spirit in the 
Atonement, the whole idea is singularly full of meaning 
(cf. Chapter v. p. 98). By the continual presentation 
of the sacrifice of Christ ; by the agonised pleadings of 
the Spirit, " Who maketh intercession for us with 
groanings that cannot be uttered " ; by the ever- 
present pain of Him who said, " Inasmuch as ye did 
it not unto the least of these my brethren, ye did it 



1 If it be objected that we are here suggesting ideas at variance 
with the doctrine of the Divine Session we may point out that there 
is a similar contradiction between Heb. vii. 25 and Heb. xii. 2, and, 
implicitly, in any doctrine of the Holy Communion except the 
Zwinglian. But I cannot think that the contradiction is more than 
verbal. We have here but the constant re -acceptation of the second 
kenosis, consummated once and for all in time (with the possibility 
of union involved), in the Being of the Eternal Trinity. 






Ignorance and Double Mind 179 

not unto Me " ; by the eternal, self-sacrificing love 
of the Godhead ; man is delivered from the conse- 
quences of his repeated sinful acts. 

What then of those who have never heard of Christ? 
What of those who, perhaps through asymmetric de- 
velopment — the hypertrophy of one faculty, leading to 
atrophy of others — perhaps through nurture, find it 
impossible to believe on Him ? What of those, the 
vast majority, neither saints nor wholly sinners ; urged 
by half purposes of good ; filled with great purposes 
never completed ; who strive sometimes and sometimes 
are careless ; double-minded men, unstable — yet not in 
all their ways ; what of us ? Without the full eager 
acceptance of Christ's gift there can be no union 
with God ; for so long as man is tainted with positive 
imperfection, so long is he necessarily barred out from 
God. If a man is to be " saved " he must accept Christ. 
That is certain, if Christianity means anything. But 
there is no time-limit set. God is the Timeless One. 
Death is a great physical change, certainly, but it is not 
the severing of personal continuity. In personality lies 
the natural (as opposed to the revealed) promise of im- 
mortality. To the person, death is only a change : for 
some it may be the change to the Imago, but for some 
there must surely be other Larval existences. 

" There shall never be one lost good ! What was shall live as 
before ; 
The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; 



180 Good is eternal 

What was good shall be good, with for evil, so much good 

more ; 
On the earth the broken arcs, in heaven the perfect round. 
All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist ; 
Not its semblance but itself — " x 

As long as there is any good in a man Christ's 
death can save him. He must accept it ; he must 
bend his will towards perfection, or he can never fully 
enter into the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost, he can 
never attain the measure of the stature of the fulness 
of Christ, which is the stature of perfect manhood. 
But God is merciful and Time is nothing. We know 
nothing by revelation, though we do know what St Paul 
thought about the matter ; but we are none the less 
sure that those too " in whose silver is much metal 
base " will learn to know the Father, and be gathered 
into the embrace of His love. God is not less merciful, 
less loving, less just than we are. 

In this thought is there any incentive to laxity ! 
Surely and emphatically, no ! 

" Who sins in hope, and sinning, says 
' Sorrow for sin God's judgment stays ! ' 
Against God's Spirit he lies ; quite stops 
Mercy with insult ; dares, and drops, 
Like a scorched fly, that spins in vain 
Upon the axis of its pain, 
Then takes its doom, to limp and crawl, 
Blind and forgot, from fall to fall." 

We must never forget that there is the Second 
Death. We must never forget that the good which is 

1 R. Browning : AM Voghr. 






Conclusion 181 

in every human being can be utterly rooted out. And 
what is so degrading as to trade on the long-suffering 
and love of another for mean ends ? Above all we 
must never forget that each sin we commit in very 
truth inflicts suffering on God. 

One thread runs through all the twisted skein of 
thought we have been trying to unravel. All down 
the ages the creature has been struggling to attain 
greater freedom. When Will appeared it was immedi- 
ately bent to the same task by the imperious necessity 
of its own nature. Freedom and will were to be the 
goal of the evolutionary strife. By sin the will was 
warped, the freedom circumscribed. But in the In- 
carnation we find not only the Pattern of what man 
was to be, but a means of attaining it. The conse- 
quences of sin are done away ; yet there is no break of 
continuity in the world-process, no interference with 
the freedom man has attained. 

Again, in Christ was revealed, not Absolute Per- 
fection, but the perfection of manhood ; not absolute 
freedom of will, but the perfection of manhood's free- 
dom and will. In Him we see fulfilled that which the 
ages had been slowly bringing into being : in Him 
material evolution finds its consummation. As far as 
is possible for man He is free, and His will is wholly 
set towards good. Of absolute freedom He emptied 
Himself when " He became man. 55 He came, not to 



182 Conclusion 

destroy the past, but to fulfil it and to interpret it in 
Himself. He puts before man the Perfect Law of 
Liberty — Freedom, ever increasing unto the Perfect 
Day. 

The keynote of the Eastern religions is eventual 
escape from freedom by absorption. The keynote of 
Christianity is ever-increasing freedom of personality : 
the acquiring of powers, and of the responsibility that 
powers bring — powers that may be used in better 
service, truer love, and deeper worship of God. In- 
creasing freedom is also the keynote of Evolution. 

Of all religions, Christianity alone falls into line 
with the Evolutionary history of the world, for both 
have the same end to attain. With the Gnostic doc- 
trine of antagonism between matter and spirit — an 
antagonism reaching right back into origins — Christi- 
anity was brought to grips with the principle which 
was to make shipwreck of the other religions by making 
them unprogressive. But the danger was avoided, and 
now we are reaping the fruits of the wisdom of the early 
Fathers. Every day the uniformity and continuity of 
God's working comes out more clearly ; every day we 
realise more in how complete a sense we men are built 
on the foundations of the past. And the freedom of 
manhood finds at once its full expression in, and derives 
its possibility from, the life and death of Christ. In 
Him we find a sure and certain hope that the shackles 
of the rigid forces amid which life came to birth, from 



Conclusion 183 

which life, through countless ages, has been winning 
free, shall one day cease to fetter us. 

" Remember, Lord, thou hast not made me good. 
Or if thou didst, it was so long ago 
I have forgotten — and never understood 
I humbly think. At best it was a crude, 
A rough-hewn goodness, that did need this woe, 
This sin, these harms of all kinds fierce and rude, 
To shape it out, making it live and grow. 

But thou art making me, I thank thee, sire. 

What thou hast done and doest thou know'st well, 

And I will help thee : — gently in thy fire 

I will lie burning ; on thy potter's wheel 

I will whirl patient, though my brain should reel ; 

Thy grace shall be enough the grief to quell, 

And growing strength perfect through weakness dire." 1 

1 G. MacDonald, The Diary of an Old Soul. 



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